FORMER Bantam Raffa De Vita admits he is scared for his family locked down in Italy.

But he also feels they are some of the lucky ones.

The Italian nation continue to suffer more than any other country in Europe with the deadly effects of the coronavirus.

The tougher restrictions introduced in England this week to force people to stay at home are already in place there.

Residents in Italy are now banned from moving more than 200 metres from where they live unless they are shopping for food or medicine.

De Vita, who spent a year at City under Phil Parkinson, is on lockdown in Scotland where he has been playing for Falkirk. But he fears for relatives and friends back home.

He said: “It is scary because it’s still getting worse. This thing has nowhere near peaked.

“Even when the numbers do start going down, it won’t be a case of just going back to normal life. It will be a long process.

“In a way I’m quite fortunate that my whole family is based more in Rome in the south, which has not been affected as much as further north.

“Rome hasn’t suffered with the number of deaths anywhere near as much as Bergamo or Milan.

“Obviously the same measures apply. You can’t leave the house for any reason – not even for a jog. You can’t be more than 200 metres away unless you are shopping for food.

“Nobody has got anything to do so I talk to my family pretty much all the time. My mother and brother have been locked in the house so long together I'm surprised they haven't tried to kill each other!

"We just call one person after another because that's all you can do right now."

The big concern is that the pandemic will sweep through Rome into the south of the country where De Vita admits they have not got the infrastructure to deal with such a widescale medical emergency.

“They wouldn’t be able to cope in terms of having enough spaces in hospital beds," he added.

"The real worry is the number of teenagers who go to the north to univerity in places like Milan.

"They all left as soon as they heard this was starting to happen but you don't know if they have carried the symptoms and it could spread south. That would be a disaster."

De Vita’s time at Valley Parade was hampered by injury. Having signed from Swindon following City’s promotion to League One in 2013, he was restricted to only 23 appearances with nine starts.

He had a brief spell with Cheltenham before heading back to Scotland where he had begun his career with Livingston.

De Vita returned to his former club after a spell at Ross County and won promotion with ex-City boss David Hopkin. He has spent this season out on loan with Partick and currently Falkirk.

Just like the Bantams, his last game was three weeks ago in a 3-0 win over Peterhead that maintained the Bairns' promotion push in second place in Scottish League One.

What happens next remains as uncertain as the competition south of the border.

But the 32-year-old takes a pragmatic view to the enforced period of nothingness that is affecting everybody.

“We complain that we can’t see our friends from back home for a long time. We had people who had booked flights to come over here at Easter but obviously everything has been cancelled.

“But I was saying to my missus that we’re probably the fortunate ones.

“It’s worse for those who are stuck abroad and maybe wanted to come back for a birth or funeral and just can’t do it. That must be devastating.

“At the moment everyone is healthy and all we have to do is sit in the house.

“It’s not good but they’re not asking us to risk our lives and go to war. It’s something that can be done.”

The hardest part for a footballer is staying motivated with the season up in the air. De Vita speaks regularly to his team-mates but there isn’t much to say.

“We get emails from the PFA up here in Scotland trying to keep us informed. But they don’t really have anything relevant to tell us because they don't know themselves.

"They say they will do their best to try to ensure clubs can honour our contracts but apart from that we don't know when we will be back in training or what will happen with the leagues.

"It's the same in England and every other country. We've all been given a (fitness) programme but you literally don't know whether it will be for two or three months or even longer.

"We don't know if the league is finished or if we'll still have the chance to get promoted. The whole thing is surreal."