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More than 100 doctors have now died in Italy’s coronavirus outbreak

The coronavirus death toll among Italian doctors reached 100 on Thursday as four more physicians died in the past 24 hours, the Italian doctors' federation FNOMCEO said.

Published: 9 April 2020 12:24 CEST
More than 100 doctors have now died in Italy's coronavirus outbreak
A doctor on a ward for coronavirus patients at a hospital in Turin. Photo: AFP
“The number of doctors who have died because of COVID-19 is 100 – perhaps even 101 at the moment, unfortunately,” a FNOMCeO spokesman told AFP.
 
Italian media reports estimate that 30 nurses and nursing assistance have
also died of COVID-19.

The toll includes retired doctors who had voluntarily returned to work during the outbreak.

They were among some 8,000 medical staff to volunteer last month for an emergency coronavirus task force.

Some hospitals in Lombardy and other badly-hit areas are struggling with half as many staff as needed to treat the number of patients being admitted, Il Messeggero reported.
 
 
According to the offical list most of these victims worked in and around Lombardy, the region at the centre of the Italian outbreak – although doctors have also died further south in Le Marche, Campania, Sicily and Puglia.

In total 13,121 healthcare workers have contracted the new coronavirus in Italy, according to the latest count by the Italian Higher Health Institute (ISS). 

“We can longer allow our doctors, our health workers, to be sent to fight without any protection against the virus,” FNOMCeO president Filippo Anelli said on the association's website.
 
Rome's ISS public health institute estimates that 10 percent of those infected with the novel coronavirus in Italy work in health care.
 
Italy's total official death toll is at 17,669 as of Thursday evening.

 

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COVID-19

Anti-vaxxer assaults Covid-era Italian PM Conte at rally

An anti-vax campaigner on Friday assaulted Italy's former premier Giuseppe Conte, who imposed strict restrictions at the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, his political party said.

Published: 6 May 2023 08:49 CEST
Anti-vaxxer assaults Covid-era Italian PM Conte at rally

Conte was “attacked by an anti-vaxxer in Massa”, a small Tuscan city where he was attending an election rally, his opposition party the Five Star Movement wrote on Facebook.

News agency Ansa said the man struck Conte in the face, blaming him for the lockdown policies imposed during the pandemic and other measures. Police officers later took him away.

As well as his own party, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed her “solidarity” with Conte.

“Any form of violence must be condemned without hesitation,” Meloni said in a statement. “Dissent must be civil and respectful of people and political groups.”

Prime minister from June 2018 to February 2021, Conte was the head of government when the Covid-19 outbreak suddenly struck northern Italy in February 2020.

Italy was the first country outside China to suffer a major outbreak of Covid-19.

The virus has killed nearly 190,000 people in Italy to date, according to the health ministry.

Conte imposed stringent coronavirus restrictions in the early phase of the pandemic, including an economically crippling shutdown and the mandating of face masks in public.

His successor as prime minister, Mario Draghi, imposed a compulsory coronavirus health pass in September 2021 tied to the Covid-19 vaccine.

Conte’s early decisions during the breakout, including one not to impose “red zones” in two hard-hit areas, are the subject of an ongoing judicial inquiry.

Investigating magistrates suspect that Conte and his government underestimated the contagiousness of Covid-19 even though available data showed that cases were spreading rapidly.

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