Life of Florida family living in Italy has dramatically changed since lockdown, they say

ITALY - There are more than 12,000 positive cases of the coronavirus in Italy as of Wednesday, and a Florida woman is among those stuck at home in an unprecedented lockdown by Italian officials.

Jessica Venture, originally from Pensacola, now she lives in Rome, Italy with her family. She spoke to FOX 13 via FaceTime, saying she and her family are healthy and doing fine. But she said it’s like a ghost town in the streets of Rome. 

“It's kind of sad actually. It looks like the zombie apocalypse has happened,” said Venture.

Italian officials ordered a nationwide lockdown Monday over coronavirus concerns, expanding restrictions Wednesday to close all stores except supermarkets and pharmacies in an effort to stop the spread of COVID-19.

“If you got to the supermarket, you have to wait outside with a number. You can't go in. They just cannot have lines inside the supermarkets,” said Venture. “So they're trying to control the situation by having everybody wait outside, and they give people gloves and things like that.”

RELATED: Italy shuts down all stores except pharmacies, food markets over coronavirus

She said the efforts to contain the outbreak are serious.

“Actually, the cops will check us if we leave our house, asking for a certificate stating why we're leaving the house. And we can only leave for necessities, that means work, health reasons or you need to get groceries,” said Venture.

Venture said she stays indoors with her two young children when her husband leaves for work, and she’s doing her best to keep her 5-year-old son on a schedule. 

“He does his homework and I do 30 minutes of work. He watches cartoons, and then I do 30 minutes of work. The baby, she's kind of in the background, eating snacks and doing what she does,” said Venture who works from home for a travel company. “So far we're doing fine. We're just trying to take vitamins and eat healthy and wash our hands a lot,” she said. 

Venture said they are able to go outside to exercise with their young children and walk their dogs, but they can’t do much else.

“We can't congregate, so we can't do anything that's not necessary. We can't go to the park in town because that's a community place. We can't go to the theater. Everything is closed,” said Venture. 

With Italy on lockdown and its residents bound to their homes, Venture said it impacts Italian culture because its people are very social.

“Even across the street, we cannot congregate. Technically, we can't even be at our neighbor's house having coffee and this is just really sad just knowing the Italian culture and how social they care,” she said.

Italian officials ordered the lockdown to last until April 3 when they hope to reopen businesses and public spaces.