It was a very tough battle but now we can look to the future with great hope without being intimidated by the coronavirus because the current signals are decidedly favorable.
This is in summary the thought of Zangrillo tree, head of San Raffaele in Milan, on the health situation linked to Covid-19. Lucia Annunziata’s guest at “Mezz’ora in più” on Rai3, the professor admitted to being decidedly optimistic. Yet only three months have passed since the darkest moment in recent Italian history. “If I go back- recalled Zangrillo- March 28 was the day where I was more scared, I felt like crying. I didn’t know where to put i sick people. Today is June 28th and all the indicators are absolutely favorable “.
Optimism yes, but there is a question that the professor does not like: the desperation and the sense of bewilderment that, despite the much improved health picture, is afflicting the Italians. “Even now there is disorientation when we read cases in Italy every day but they are not sick. With this I do not mean that from tomorrow we are free to do what we want – he has declared – but we must not confuse and alarm at random. The fact that Italy has broken down by a third is equivalent to a very serious ongoing disease for me. Right now the country is sick of loss of appetite, despair “.
Zangrillo is keen to point out that his “It is not politics but observation. The sick do not come to be treated: they die of cancer, of a heart attack, they are afraid to come to the hospital and do not consume”. For the primary there are three scenarios at the moment: “There may be nothing, there may be the Spanish, there may be some outbreaks to check. I would put a chip on this latter possibility, it is the most likely, given the history of medicine. If it should go like this we are ready, then we must go back to live”.
The professor also explained why he does not fear the new outbreaks registered in our country: “They have no meaning for me. In Florida there was an explosion of infection, therefore of infected but not sick people. Indeed, mortality went from 6.7 to 0.4. In Italy we have a series of outbreaks which must be checked and identified but not equivalent to the disease outbreak “. To support his thesis, the professor also said he had “talked to Naples, where there was the Italian cup final and the fear of gathering and there is no patient at Cotugno or Monaldi “.
Zangrillo then explained what might have happened to the virus in recent months and why the number of patients today does not increase as at the beginning of the health emergency. “It is not to be easy-going or to say that there is no virus – stressed the professor-. The virus is there and has not changed but in its interaction with the host it has gone through the phenomenon of homoplasia, to a loss of charge detected in the laboratory, therefore it is an evidence which corresponds to a lack of disease. I can’t say you won’t be back in a few months but all the indicators are positive “.
“The viral load- he explained again- it also depends on replicative ability of the virus. Virologists are observing from swabs that the virus has lost this ability. Then there is another aspect, these viruses all have a history. It is not that this, which has presented itself in a worse way and is in some ways still unknown, cannot follow what has happened for other similar viruses, which at a certain point have exhausted their “production cycle”. Per this, according to the head of San Raffaele in Milan “iinstead of thinking about Spanish or more dramatic events, maybe we will also consider this aspect “.
There is another important point that Zangrillo wanted to specify:“In these 4-5 months we have produced a series of scientific works and evidence on drugs, we know who we must protect. In Florida an extraordinary figure has emerged: the average age of the infected, not sick, has moved downwards: it is 35-38 years old. It means that we must focus our attention on older people, working in harmony with the territory, which if it is not managed does not produce anything good. We can also have one hundred thousand terapie intensive but if we don’t know how to make them work, people will die even worse “than now.
The professor then concluded his speech by recalling some “invitations” made at the beginning of an emergency: “When someone suggested building a phantasmagorical number of intensive care as the last and only bulwark to control this and other types of viruses. I said I didn’t share. I think instead a multi-year plan should be funded to deal with any type of health emergency.”
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