To cope with the Coronavirus emergency, the lack of beds, the bursting intensive care and the primacy of the number of infections in Italy, in Lombardy we are racing against time to set up field hospitals, while in Bergamo the army organizes the transport of the coffins from the Maggiore cemetery to the crematoria outside the region. The first hospital to leave, already by the weekend, is the one donated by an American NGO to Cremona. But the project for a 400-seat resuscitation hub at the Milan Fair continues; the Alpini association has started to set up a field hospital in the spaces of the Bergamo fair, where the situation is dramatic and there are plans for Crema and also in Piacenza. Early this morning the volunteers of Samaritan's Pursue, an American evangelical humanitarian organization, together with the men of civil protection and the army, began to set up 15 white tents in the large square in front of the Cremona hospital, under stress for the high number of Coronavirus patients. The first of the 60 beds, of which eight are intensive care, managed by 60 doctors and nurses, will be operational the day after tomorrow, barring mishaps.
"If everything goes as it is going - explained Kelly Suter, medical director of the facility - the day after tomorrow or at the latest Saturday we will be ready". Initially the "half of the beds will be opened. Part of the staff is already here" with drugs and equipment - respirators, oxygen, x-ray equipment and a support laboratory and so on - while the rest "will arrive on the weekend" with a second flight from the United States. Many of the organization's experienced doctors and staff, explained the director, "have already been in emergency situations around the world" as happened with Ebola in the Congo. This situation has led to the creation of a precise safety protocol to be applied to patients and operators. As for the reason why the NGO chose to help Italy, Kelly Suter said: "because it is one of the nations most severely affected by the Coronavirus".
Today alone there have been 319 deaths, a total of 1,959, while 17,713 are positive, 7,285 hospitalized, and 924 people in intensive care. In Bergamo, we move forward at a rapid pace towards the opening of the field hospital of the National Alpine Association, a structure capable of hosting 300 patients who will have 75 nurses and 30 doctors from China at their bedside as reinforcement. Meanwhile, the hypothesis of two military hospitals is increasingly concrete, in Crema (here too doctors are expected to come from China) and in Piacenza: the latter should be ready in 72 hours and the materials are already being transferred to the area, and for the first was an inspection ordered by the Minister of Defense, Lorenzo Guerini. And after the hub at the fair in Milan, the government - explained the president of Lombardy, Attilio Fontana - plans to build two similar structures: one in Central Italy and one in the South.