ROME (AP) – Although the world said goodbye – or good release – until 2020, a year in which the pandemic brought hardship and pain to billions, some of whom have been fighting the virus in the front line war continued until the clock past midnight.
At Covid 3 Hospital in Casalpalocco, on the outskirts of Rome, doctors and nurses barely seemed to register the new year, as they tended to 100 patients who had serious or serious illnesses as a result of coronavirus infections.
In an intensive care unit, all but one of the beds were occupied. Medical staff calmly cared for patients lying in dimly lit rooms, dispensing medications, checking respiratory machines, and filling out medical records.
“This particular night (New Year’s Eve) is a surreal night, just like Christmas, as Epiphany will be, just like last Easter and all the other holidays,” said Dr. Paolo Petrassi, coordinator of the night shift. “They are, say, holidays separate from what the real world once was, as we have known it forever.”
The 53-year-old recounted the experience that is now familiar to so many professionals in the medical profession around the world who have had to treat patients with COVID: having to constantly monitor patients and manage their condition, each having the its own set of complicated problems.
More than 83 million coronavirus infections worldwide and more than 1.8 million deaths have been confirmed. Along with the elderly, medical staff have been especially affected, struggling to save patients, even when their own colleagues have fallen ill with a disease that almost no one could have imagined a year ago.
“Everything was unexpected,” Petrassi told The Associated Press.
Italy was the early epicenter of the pandemic in Europe in the spring. Images of Italian nurses and doctors, exhausted by briefly withdrawing protective equipment, became a smile of what would happen months later to his colleagues in Spain, France, the United States and elsewhere.
Last month, after a summer in which Italy seemed to have overcome the scourge, it once again became the country with the highest number of deaths in Europe.. And once again, the sad reality was reflected in his eyes of the Italian medical staff.
“We are now almost twelve months away from this pandemic and unfortunately we still don’t have a chance to say it’s over,” Petrassi said. “We only hope that mass vaccination will hopefully help control this disastrous phenomenon.”
European regulators approved the first vaccine shortly before Christmas. European Union countries began administering the shootings on December 27, but it will be a long time before a sizable number of the bloc’s 450 million people are immunized.
Experts say at least 60-70% of the population needs to be vaccinated to prevent the virus from setting in.
Petrassi hopes COVID’s nightmare will end soon.
“We all live in uncertainty, but at the same time we wait and we are all doing our best,” he said. “We are using all of our professional and physical resources, our knowledge, our awareness, spending time with our families, free time from our own and our loved ones.”
“We are investing all of this so that all these efforts are not in vain.”
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