We are now forced to create intensive therapies in the corridor, in the operating rooms, in the recovery rooms. We gutted entire hospital wards to make room for the seriously ill. One of the best health in the world, the Lombard one, one step away from collapse.
Antonio Pesenti, 68 years old, the coordinator of the Lombardy Region Crisis Unit for intensive care. Publicly praised by the scientist Alberto Mantovani like one of the best Italian men of science, a physician-resuscitator with strong nerves, used to governing any type of emergency. But at nine on Saturday evening, after 17 days of non-stop work, his voice broken by tiredness and concern: If the population does not understand that must stay at home, the situation will become catastrophic.
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She, together with colleagues in the reanimations, the author of a very harsh letter to the government of Giuseppe Conte: The scientific projections are very alarming. What do you mean by that?
The framework of gravity such as to require an increase in resuscitation places up to ten times the current availability. The number of hospitalized expected on March 26 of 18 thousand Lombard patients, of which a number between 2,700 and 3,200 will request hospitalization in intensive care. Today there are already over a thousand patients between those in resuscitation and those who risk getting worse from one minute to the next. We monitor the situation 24 hours a day.
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In the letter he talks about risks not only for coronavirus patients, but also for everyone else: The survival not only of Covid-19 patients is in danger – write – but also of that part of the population that still turns to the sanitary system.
So far in Lombardy ambulances have always arrived in 8 minutes, now they risk not arriving within an hour. A huge danger for those who have a heart attack, and not only.
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In short, Lombardy’s emergency-urgency system is no longer able to guarantee ordinary standards.
Unfortunately the truth. I am not saying this to alarm citizens, but to make everyone understand that it is not the time to go out, to go shopping or to go and drink the spritz, as we have been saying for days now. We need to change social relationships, with the shops and neighborhood markets closed. In Milan, where I live, at least so far there have been too many people needlessly around. You only have to go out to buy food.
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The beds in intensive care units increase day by day, but they are never enough.
We are creating Covid-19 blocks everywhere. By now all the main hospitals in Lombardy have been involved, at least fifty. As known, infected patients cannot be mixed with others. It means having resuscitations where everything happens with particular protection systems: from filtered air to doctors and nurses who always dress and undress in the presence of another person to check that the procedures are correct because a minimum distraction is enough to become infected.
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In what conditions are you working?
We work harnessed to protect ourselves from the virus. After 4 hours we are sweating soaked, the movements are slowed down and we have to get out of the resuscitation to hydrate ourselves. We are doing everything possible, and even more, but the contagions must be stopped. The only way is prevention.
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In one of the last meetings with ICU doctors, there were those who failed to hold back tears.
By profession we are used to dealing with any situation in cold blood. But only those who are experiencing it in the front line can understand the drama of the events.
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likely to transport seriously ill people to the rest of Italy?
They are very complex patients to move. Both for their physical conditions and for the protections that must be taken in order not to infect us. I see it difficult.
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March 7, 2020 (change March 8, 2020 | 00:58)
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