These figures alone show the violence of the health crisis suffered by Italy for several weeks. A hundred doctors have lost their lives there since the start of the epidemic. The disease has claimed more than 18,000 lives in the country, their professional federation announced on Thursday.
"We have the number of doctors who died because of the Covid-19, it is 100, perhaps even 101 at the moment unfortunately", indicated Thursday afternoon the press service of the National Federation of the orders of doctors in surgery and odontology.
The site of this federation is marked with a black ribbon in sign of mourning and gives the names of all the deceased doctors, some of whom were retired and were called back to help overwhelmed health services. "We can no longer allow our doctors, our health workers, to be sent to fight with bare hands the virus", wrote on the site the president of FNOMCEO, Filippo Anelli. "It's an unequal fight that hurts us, that hurts the citizens, that hurts the country."
Nurses on the front line
Thirty nurses and caregivers also died from the Covid-19, according to Italian media. According to the Higher Institute of Health (ISS), the main public health organization on the peninsula, around 10% of those infected belong to health personnel.
“Our objective is to assist patients […] and we are demonstrating this in this pandemic: it is among nurses that we find the highest percentage of positive health workers at Covid, around 52%. Among the nurses, there are those who die from Covid because they are close to the patients, but they do so without hesitation, "said FNOPI president Barbara Mangiacavalli, quoted by this union federation of nurses.
According to the latest official report published Thursday evening, the coronavirus killed 18,219 people in Italy (+ 610 in 24 hours), for a total of 143,626 cases (+4,204). For the fifth day in a row, the number of intensive care patients decreased (3,605, -88), and that of those hospitalized with symptoms also decreased (28,399, -6).
Debate on the consequences of confinement
Faced with the slowdown of the pandemic, the Italian government plans to relax the containment measures in force for more than a month and expiring on April 13, a prospect which is the subject of heated debates between the proponents of a restart of the economy at a standstill and supporters of maintaining the current measures to avoid a new wave of contagions.
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“We cannot think of living under a glass bell. Please don't become maniacs, "Professor Giovanni Rezza, director of the Infectious Diseases Department of the ISS, urged in an interview published Thursday by the daily Il Corriere della Sera .
