As Italy prepares to emerge from the West’s first and most extensive coronavirus lockdown, it is increasingly clear that something went terribly wrong in Lombardy.
lockdown, it is increasingly clear that something went terribly wrong in Lombardy, the hardest-hit region in Europe’s hardest-hit country.
Prosecutors, meanwhile, are deciding whether to lay any criminal blame for the hundreds of dead in nursing homes, many of whom don’t even figure into Lombardy’s official death toll of 13,269, half of Italy’s total. “After a phase of stabilization, many deteriorated quickly. This was clinical information we didn’t have,” said Dr. Maurizio Marvisi, a pneumologist at a private clinic in hard-hit Cremona. “There was practically nothing in the medical literature.”
Italy was forced to use home care in part because of its low ICU capacity: After years of budget cuts, Italy entered the crisis with 8.6 ICU beds per 100,000 people, well below the OECD average of 15.9 and a fraction of Germany’s 33.9, the group said. “The region was extremely behind in giving us protective equipment and it was inadequate, because the first time, they gave us 10 surgical masks and gloves,” said Dr. Laura Turetta in the city of Varese. “Obviously for our close contact with patients, it wasn’t the correct way to protect ourselves.”
By March 2, the Superior Institute of Health recommended Alzano and nearby Nembro be sealed off as the towns in Lodi had been. But political authorities never implemented the quarantine recommendation there, allowing the infection to spread for a second week until all the Lombardy region was locked down March 7.
“Clearly, with the benefit of hindsight, we should have done a total shutdown in Lombardy, everyone at home and no one moves,” said Andrea Crisanti, a microbiologist and virologist advising the Veneto regional government. But he acknowledged how hard that was, given Lombardy’s outsize role in the Italian economy, which even before the pandemic was heading toward a recession.
“We have to let people know they can go back to life as it was, while safeguarding their health," he said. “The paradigm has changed,” Bonomi told RAI state television. “We can’t make Italians secure if we don’t reopen factories. But how do we make factories safe to secure Italians?” The national civil protection agency opposed the plan, arguing it could never equip it with ventilators or personnel in time. Instead, the agency, which reports to the rival 5-Star-Democratic government in Rome, preferred smaller field units set up outside hospitals and a program to move critical patients elsewhere.
Lombardy has more nursing homes than any other region, housing at least 24,000 elderly, and it registered more dead at those facilities than others too. Of the 3,045 dead from Feb. 1 to April 15 in the region, 1,625 were either positive for the virus or showed its symptoms, according to preliminary results from a survey by the Superior Institute of Health.
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