Supervisor Elham AbolFateh
Editor in Chief Mohamed Wadie

Nightmare in Italy... Here's Glimpse in Hard-Hit Bergamo


Sat 21 Mar 2020 | 11:39 AM
Yassmine Elsayed

The new epidemic of Corona has claimed 627 lives in Italy in the last 24 hours in a new record number, raising the death toll to more than four thousand in this country most affected in the world.

Civil Defense authorities announced that on Friday, 381 people have died in Bergamo, the Lombardy region, north of the country.

Across the country, 6,000 new infections were further reported.

Civil Defense official Angelo Borelli said that 679 tents have been made up to date to be used as primary sorting centers to facilitate the tasks of health teams facing great difficulties with the increasing number of patients.

"The number of people infected to date is only the tip of the iceberg. We are facing a pandemic that in most cases does not show symptoms or show limited symptoms," Director of the San Martino Infectious Diseases Hospital in Genoa said.

"There are too many people walking around and carrying the virus, and there is a risk that they will pass it on to others."

After calls were issued in Lombardy as well as in Rome, the government is considering resorting to the deployment of the army to implement restrictions on movement, especially after 9,500 violations were registered on Thursday.

Several municipalities now use drones to monitor the application of restrictions on movement and to monitor irregular gatherings. It is expected that 13,000 police will be added to the 7,000 currently deployed on the roads of the region.

Italian media are talking about the issuance of a government decree that includes new measures to be issued in few days.

On another hand, a recent report by SKynews featured life at the main hospital in Bergamo, the hardest-hit hospital in Italy in the hardest-hit town in the hardest-hit province, Lombardy.

[caption id="attachment_116819" align="aligncenter" width="392"] Largest hospital in Bergamo, Italy, as Skynews report featured it[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_116820" align="aligncenter" width="375"] Patients at Bergamo's hospital, Italy[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_116821" align="aligncenter" width="376"] A Doctor at Bergamo's hospital, Italy[/caption]

The report read: “Staff frantically wave us out of the way, pushing gurneys carrying men and women on mobile respirators - it's not chaos, but it is hectic... They rush past wards already rammed with beds all filled with people in terrible distress - gasping for air, clutching at their chests and at tubes pumping oxygen into their oxygen-starved lungs.”

The medical team even used the waiting room. “They have to use every bit of space," Vanna Toninelli, head of the hospital press office said.

She added: “The medical teams are fighting a war here and they are losing.”