CHIARI, Italy (AP) – The 160-bed hospital in the city of Chiari, in the Po River Valley, has no more room for patients affected by the highly contagious variant of COVID-19 first identified in Britain which has put hospitals in the northern province of Brescia maximum alert.
This story was repeated a year after Lombardy became the epicenter of the pandemic in Italy, was a sickening finding for Dr. Gabriele Zanolini, who runs the COVID-19 room of the Hospital M. Mellini of the formerly walled city that maintains its medieval circular street. pattern.
“You know there are patients in the emergency room and you don’t know where to put them,” Zanolini told The Associated Press.
“This is an anguish for me, not being able to respond to people who need to be treated. The most difficult moment is to find ourselves in a state of emergency again, after so long ”.
The rise in UK variants has filled 90% of hospital beds in the province of Brescia, bordering both the Veneto and Emilia-Romagna regions, as Italy crossed the threshold of 100,000 pandemic deaths on Monday and marks the one-year Wednesday of Italy’s first draconian closure in the West.
Although Zanolini was able to offer a safety valve in Bergamo during the sharp rise last spring and in Milan and Varese in the autumn, he now has to ask hospitals elsewhere in the region to take virus patients. which he himself cannot admit.
New measures are being reconsidered in Rome to curb the rise in new cases attributed to virus variants, including those identified in South Africa and Brazil. With the UK variant prevalent in Italy and running from school-age children and adolescents to families, Lombardy has once again put all schools in distance education, as have several southern regions where the healthcare system it is more fragile.
In this wave, patients in the COVID-19 room of Chiari Hospital are increasingly members of the family: husbands and wives, parents and children – said Zanolini. And, unlike previous rises, the average age has dropped, and many of the patients with viruses need help breathing between the ages of 45 and 55. “We have seen, however, that they respond well to treatment,” Zanolini said of the younger patients, noting that mortality remains high among the elderly.
Despite the months of renewed restrictions that began in October, the number of deaths in Italy remains stubbornly high, a few hundred a day. This week it topped 100,000, the second highest in Europe after Britain.
New Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi is focusing on vaccines to help the country emerge from the pandemic, pledging in a video message this week to intensify the campaign significantly in the coming weeks.
“Everyone has to do their part to contain this spread of this virus,” Draghi said Tuesday. “But above all, the government must do its part. Rather, one should try to do more every day. The pandemic is not yet defeated. “
The vaccine is the only way out, Zanolini agrees. He sees around him that people are tired of restrictions and are relaxing (too relaxed) with meetings, distancing and masks.
“We are worried because we do not see an end. It looks like the tunnel is still very long, “Zanolini said.” We are affected by another wave and we are very tired. “
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