“ The church in the empty Bergamo cemetery. Finally ”. The mayor of this city in northern Italy published a photo of the interior of the building on Saturday, April 18, released from the coffins that he kept welcoming throughout these weeks of pandemic .
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This image and this tweet illustrate the pressure that is easing on this country, in particular on Lombardy, which is coming out of the acute phase of this health crisis whose death toll is 23,000 dead, more than half in this northern region alone. Bergamo, administered by Giorgio Gori, a member of the Democratic Party, is considered in Italy as the martyr city of Covid-19.
In another tweet on Thursday, the mayor said that 795 of his constituents died between March 1 and April 12. This is more than double the official number of deaths due to this disease in his city (272), this assessment only identifying the dead who have been tested. Many Covid-19 victims die without being screened, especially when they are not hospitalized.
During the crisis, municipal funeral services could not keep pace with the deaths, the bodies had to be sent to other regions to be cremated. Again on Friday, such a convoy left the main cemetery of Bergamo. " We have seen the demand for cremations increase day by day and the only way to manage this situation, which also reduces costs for loved ones, was to transfer the bodies elsewhere, " explained Giorgio Gori at the end of March.
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Italy announced Friday a sharp increase in healings (more than 2,500). In Lombardy, the number of patients in intensive care fell below the thousand for the first time in a month. The region plans to start blood tests next week on health workers in some particularly affected cities, Bergamo, Brescia, Lodi, Cremona, then Milan.
Member of the Superior Health Council (CSS), Professor Walter Ricciardi warned in the Italian media on Saturday against any excess of optimism: " The second wave is not a hypothesis, it is a certainty ". “ This is why it is very important not to speed up the reopening. Otherwise, we risk suffering this second wave before the summer, ”continued this public health specialist, adviser to the World Health Organization (WHO).