Italy’s large elderly population professes a hurdle in slowing the number of coronavirus deaths in the worst-affected country in Europe, a health specialist has said.
Italy is a country of old people,” said Prof Massimo Galli, the director of infectious diseases at Sacco hospital in Milan. “The elderly with previous pathologies are notoriously numerous here. I think this could explain why we are seeing more serious cases of coronavirus here, which I repeat, in the vast majority of cases start mildly and cause few problems, especially in young people and certainly in children.
Live testimonies on twitter surged on the reality of the situation of the deadly virus.
One Italian user on twitter shed the light on the situation by stressing that Italy made a slip by miscalculating the situation and people kept going out. The user exclaimed that the elder population is dying due to the deadly virus.
An Italian doctor at the heart of the coronavirus outbreak that has placed the country under lockdown has painted a grim picture of the deadly illness – likening it to a “tsunami that has swept us all.”
Dr. Daniele Macchini, who works at the Humanitas Gavazzeni hospital in the northern city of Bergamo, warned in a lengthy post o about the dangers of complacency in the relentless war against the insidious virus.
Italy, where more than 460 people have been killed and 9,172 others infected by the virus, has imposed unprecedented national restrictions on its 60 million inhabitants.
“After much thought about whether and what to write about what is happening to us, I felt that silence was not responsible,” Macchini wrote in his post, as translated by Dr. Silvia Stringhini, an epidemiologist and researcher at the Geneva University’s Institute of Global Health.
“I will therefore try to convey to people far from our reality what we are living in Bergamo in these days of Covid-19 pandemic. I understand the need not to create panic, but when the message of the dangerousness of what is happening does not reach people I shudder,” he said.
In Bergamo, a city of about 122,000 some 30 miles northeast of Milan, 1,245 people have been diagnosed by the coronavirus in one of the country’s worst-affected areas.
“I myself watched with some amazement the reorganization of the entire hospital in the past week when our current enemy was still in the shadows: the wards slowly ’emptied,’ elective activities were interrupted,” he continued in the chilling post, which was shared more than 29,000 times.
“All this rapid transformation brought an atmosphere of silence and surreal emptiness to the corridors of the hospital that we did not yet understand, waiting for a war that was yet to begin and that many (including me) were not so sure would ever come with such ferocity,” he said.
“I still remember my night call a week ago when I was waiting for the results of a swab. When I think about it, my anxiety over one possible case seems almost ridiculous and unjustified, now that I’ve seen what’s happening. Well, the situation now is dramatic, to say the least,” Macchini added.
The war has literally exploded and battles are uninterrupted day and night. But now that need for beds has arrived in all its drama. One after the other the departments that had been emptied fill up at an impressive pace.
“The boards with the names of the patients, of different colours depending on the operating unit, are now all red and instead of surgery you see the diagnosis, which is always the damned same: bilateral interstitial pneumonia.”
The doctor urged people not to describe COVID-19 as a bad case of the flu.
Other post disclosed that Italy hospitals are saturated and running 200 of their capacity with friends calling as they see people dying in front of them.
The virus in Italy also took a dark side as Italian Luca Franzese appealed for help after the death of his sister Theresa, 47, at home surrounded by family. Theresa ultimately tested positive for Covid19 Coronavirus. “We have been waiting for 24 hours for the outcome of the Coronavirus swap – explains Luca. He had stayed with his sister cors for 24 hours with no help, he later tested positive for the virus.
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