Italy’s death toll surges by 627 in a single day to 4,032

Italy’s coronavirus death toll has leapt by 627 in a single day, an increase of 18.4 percent, taking the total to 4,032 – by far the largest daily rise in absolute terms since the virus emerged a month ago.

On Thursday, Italy overtook China as the country to register most deaths from the highly contagious virus.

Until today, Italy had never recorded more than 475 deaths in a single day, while China, where the virus has slowed sharply, has never reported more than 150.

The total number of cases in Italy rose to 47,021 from a previous 41,035, an increase of 14.6%, the Civil Protection Agency said.

The hardest-hit northern region of Lombardy remains in a critical situation, with 2,549 deaths and 22,264 cases.

Of those originally infected nationwide, 5,129 had fully recovered on Friday compared to 4,440 the day before. There were 2,655 people in intensive care against a previous 2,498.

It follows Lombardy sending for the army to enforce its coronavirus lockdown today as 380 more people died in that region alone and doctors in Italy’s crisis-hit hospitals described an ‘endless stream’ of sick patients. 

The region in northern Italy has hired 114 soldiers to keep people inside after some Italians defied the country’s quarantine rules – hampering its efforts to halt the world’s deadliest outbreak. 

More than 53,000 people have already been issued with summons for violating the rules, with some people going shopping several times a day while others have been exercising together outdoors.   

The northern region of Veneto shut parks today and said residents could no longer go for walks, while adjacent Emilia-Romagna banned jogging and bicycle rides, saying people had to stay indoors to prevent infections.    

Towns have taken measures such as shutting down public wi-fi and closing down gambling machines in the few shops that remain open in a desperate bid to keep people inside.  

‘Unfortunately we are not seeing a change of trend in the numbers, which are rising,’ Lombardy governor Attilio Fontana told a news conference today as he announced the army would step in.  

The crisis has overwhelmed Italy’s health service, prompting doctors to urge Britain to enter a total lockdown now to prevent a similar crisis engulfing the health service in the UK. 

‘What I would suggest is just shut down to stop the outbreak,’ said Dr Lorenzo Grazioli, who works at the Papa Giovanni XII hospital in hard-hit Bergamo and was previously based in the UK. 

Another health worker in Italy – British nurse Connor McAinsh – told ITV News that ‘it’s just an endless stream of people coming in and as soon as we have a bed, we have a new patient coming in who needs critical care’.   

Some patients have been wearing tightly-sealed ‘bubble’ helmets in intensive care, which help them breathe and have been shown to improve survival chances.   

Meanwhile, the city of Bergamo is sounding the alarm over a high death rate which is not fully explained by official virus cases – suggesting that some patients are dying of Covid-19 without ever being diagnosed. 

‘We believe the true numbers are hidden,’ said Francesco Alleva, spokesman for Bergamo’s mayor. ‘Because many people are dying at home or in structures for the elderly, and they have never been tested for the virus.’     

Last week alone, 400 people died in Bergamo and 12 neighbouring towns – four times the number who died the same week the previous year. 

However, according to the Bergamo mayor’s office, only 91 of those had tested positive for the virus – suggesting that others also died of the virus.  

Nearly 500 beds at Bergamo’s main hospital are dedicated to people suffering severe symptoms of the virus, 80 of those in intensive care. 

But current arrangements only allow testing only of people who show up at a screening area at the hospital with severe symptoms, missing people who are sick at home.  

‘We are confronting the biggest Covid emergency after Wuhan,’ said Dr Luca Lorini, head of intensive care at the hospital, named for native son Pope John XXIII. 

Lorini estimates that the true number of infected in the area is five to ten times the official figure of 4,645.  

Police cars have been touring Bergamo with loudspeakers instructing people not to go out except for true necessities, such as work or grocery shopping. 

To further discourage people from leaving their homes, Mayor Giorgio Gori this week turned off the public wi-fi and closed down gambling machines in tobacco shops, which remain open and where people can also pay some bills.

However, Lorini said it would take until at least next week to determine if the containment measures were having an impact.

In a Bergamo hospital, some patients have been wearing bubble helmets which help them breathe and are believed to boost survival rates more than traditional face masks. 

Respiratory problems are one of the most severe symptoms of the coronavirus.   

A new field hospital has also opened in Cremona, consisting of 15 tents and 60 beds, financed by a Christian disaster relief organisation in the US. 

Soldiers were today setting up equipment at the new temporary hospital, in scenes reminiscent of China where authorities hurried new hospitals into existence in Wuhan. 

The army is also being called in to enforce the lockdown in Lombardy. Nearly half of Italy’s cases – 19,884 – have been recorded in the region. 

A request to use the army ‘has been accepted… and 114 soldiers will be on the ground throughout Lombardy… it is still too little, but it is positive,’ Lombardy regional president Attilio Fontana told a news conference. 

Fontana has asked the national government in Rome to close all private and public offices, other than essential ones, as well as construction sites, and to crack down harder on people who continue to flout the quarantine.

‘I tried to convince him that we have to take more rigorous measures,’ Fontana told La7 television on Thursday, referring to a conversation with prime minister Conte. ‘We can’t joke around anymore.’ 

Stefano Bonaccini, president of the Emilia Romagna region which is the country’s second hardest-hit after Lombardy, banned running and most other open-air activities on Thursday.

‘If someone wants to tell me that he can’t give up running, I’ll take him with me on a tour of the hospital,’ Bonaccini wrote on Facebook. 

Italy surpassed China as the country with the highest death toll yesterday, when 427 new deaths took the Italian total to 3,405 – higher than China’s 3,245.  

Italy’s unwanted lead is only likely to grow larger, with China beginning to loosen its restrictions while the city of Wuhan had no new cases today or yesterday. 

Research by Italy’s health service found that some 70 per cent of patients dying from the virus in Italy are men. Men were also more likely to die in China, although scientists are unsure why this is.

Italy’s 5,322 new cases yesterday was a new record for the country, squashing hopes that the quarantine was beginning to show signs of working.  

Italian prime minister Conte has also warned that the lockdown measures may have to be tightened if they are not ‘respected’. 

Some of Conte’s strictest measures – such as the closure of all shops except for grocery stores and pharmacies – had been due to expire next Wednesday.

But the Italian leader said yesterday that an extension of all these precautions was inevitable.

‘All the measures we have taken, both the ones that closed a lot of the country’s businesses and the ones that restricted people’s movement, can only be extended,’ Conte said.

Schools are thus unlikely to reopen on April 3 and parents will have to find ways to look after their children while working from home for many more weeks or months.

‘At the moment, there are no other far-reaching restrictive measures being considered,’ said Conte.

‘But if our prohibitions are not respected, we will have to act.’

He added: ‘Use your common sense and act with utmost caution. We are not underestimating anything and always acting based on the worst-case scenario.’

It also emerged this week that more than 2,600 medics have been infected by the virus, taking them out of service when they are desperately needed. 

At least 13 have died after being infected with coronavirus. 

Hospitals have been overwhelmed even in the wealthy north, and there are fears of total collapse if the virus spreads on the same scale in the poorer south. 

A shocking Sky News report showed the hectic scenes inside the Papa Giovanni XXII hospital in Bergamo, with staff rushing through wards with beds full of patients in distress.

Horrifying video footage showed people gasping for air while holding onto their chests and tubes amid a constant bleep of heart monitors and breathing pumps, with other patients wearing ‘bubble helmets’ to help them breathe.

Dr Lorenzo Grazioli, who works at the hospital but was previously based in Leicester, told Sky News’s Stuart Ramsay: ‘I have never felt so stressed in my life.

‘I’m an intensivist, and I am quite used to intense moments, and the choices, and people are critical and die without any treatment, and you [usually] make the difference.

‘But when you are at this point you realise that you are not enough. We are 100 anaesthetists, we are doing our best, but maybe it’s not enough.’ 

In Bergamo, the inability to comfort virus-stricken family members or even attend a funeral has been among the most wrenching aspects of the crisis.   

Hospital wards try to help by phoning updates to loved ones and allowing phone calls when patients start to recover. 

But when death is near, hospital director Lorini said, a visit would be ‘a useless explosion of contagion.’

‘It is terrible to lose a loved one and not be able to hug them. But that is what has happened in epidemics for a thousand years, and what will also happen for the next thousand years,’ Lorini said.

Once a loved one with the virus dies, family members are not permitted to choose a favorite outfit for burial. 

By government decree, the dead are buried in the clothes they died in, wrapped in sterile blankets and placed inside coffins as quickly as possible.

‘There is a huge psychological issue for family members who cannot see the body,’ said the WHO’s Italian adviser Walter Ricciardi said. ‘Without a body, it is hard to realize a death occurred.’

The sobering toll hits in full force with just a glance at the local newspaper, L’Eco di Bergamo, which has seen the number of pages dedicated to death notices multiply from one to nine, 10, even 11 pages.

Conte has also made a fresh call for economic backing from Brussels today, urging the EU to use the ‘full firepower’ of its rescue fund.  

Conte called Friday for the European Union to tap the ‘full firepower’ of its rescue fund to combat the coronavirus outbreak.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Conte urged the EU to adapt its European Stability Mechanism (ESM) – the war chest for eurozone countries with serious debt problems – to fight the virus pandemic.

‘The ESM was crafted with a different type of crisis in mind, so it must be adapted to the new circumstances so that we can make use of its full firepower,’ Conte said. 

The Italian premier had yesterday welcomed the ECB’s massive €750billion (£680bn) bond-buying stimulus package designed to help virus-wracked economies.

The ECB’s emergency scheme will pump cash into the economy by buying additional government and corporate bonds until a least the end of the year.  

French finance minister Bruno Le Maire said separately today that the EU must stand by Italy, otherwise all member states would suffer.

It could not be a case of ‘everyone for themselves,’ it had to be all working together to get through the crisis, Le Maire added. 

Coffins of the deceased  in Bergamo were whisked away on a fleet of army trucks earlier this week after the cemetery Bergamo was overwhelmed by the death toll.   

The column of army vehicles brought the dead out of Bergamo on Wednesday night in what Italians have called ‘one of the saddest photos in the history of our country’. 

The cemetery, like the hospital, in Bergamo can no longer cope with the mounting death toll in the city, where more than 4,300 people have been infected and at least 93 have died. 

Mortuaries are full and crematorium staff have been handling 24 bodies a day, including the regular drumbeat of non-virus deaths, meaning the bodies of virus victims have had to be dispatched to neighbouring provinces. 

Giacomo Angeloni, the local official in charge of cemeteries in Bergamo, said earlier this week that the crematorium was handling around 24 bodies a day, almost twice its normal maximum. 

Local authorities in Bergamo had appealed for help with cremations after being overwhelmed by the death toll. 

The pews of the crematorium church have been removed to leave space to lay out scores of coffins but more have been arriving every day. 

One Italian who saw the picture of a column of trucks said it was ‘one of the saddest photos in the history of our country’, while another said it was a ‘photo of war’.  

‘We are Italians and it is at times like these that we bring out the best in us. We will get out of it and we will do it for them too,’ one said.    

Inside Italy’s nightmarish coronavirus wards: Terrifying footage shows patients in bubble helmets struggling to breathe as doctors warn their best efforts are ‘not enough’ after fatalities soared by 427 to 3,405 – HIGHER even than China 

Desperate Italian medics at the coronavirus epicentre told how all their efforts ‘are not enough’ as their country’s death toll soared above that of even China.

The number of fatalities there hit 3,405 yesterday, the highest in the world, despite the valiant efforts of shattered doctors to keep the ailing victims of the virus alive.

A shocking Sky News report showed the hectic scenes inside the Papa Giovanni XXII hospital in the crisis-hit area of Bergamo in Lombardy, with staff rushing through wards with beds full of patients in distress.

Horrifying video footage showed people gasping for air while holding onto their chests and tubes amid a constant bleep of heart monitors and breathing pumps, with other patients wearing ‘bubble helmets’ to help them breathe.

Dr Lorenzo Grazioli, who works at the hospital but was previously based in Leicester, told Sky News’s Stuart Ramsay: ‘I have never felt so stressed in my life.

‘I’m an intensivist, and I am quite used to intense moments, and the choices, and people are critical and die without any treatment, and you [usually] make the difference.

‘But when you are at this point you realise that you are not enough. We are 100 anaesthetists, we are doing our best, but maybe it’s not enough.’ 

Footage showed the Italian medics using ‘bubble helmets’ to treat patients needing breathing assistance.

The gadgets – a transparent, air-tight helmet – have been shown to help critically ill patients breathe easier and improve their chances of survival. 

A ventilator is a machine that supports breathing by getting oxygen into the lungs and removing carbon dioxide from the body. 

Usually, the ventilator is connected to the patient through a facemask, with a tube that is placed into the mouth or nose and down the windpipe.  

Grazioli, the doctor who spoke to Sky News, has also urged the UK to adopt a total lockdown.

‘What I would suggest is just shut down to stop the outbreak and not come into this kind of situation that is very difficult to manage,’ he said.  

The medics at Bergamo sent a simple message to Britain and other countries: ‘Get ready.’  

In separate footage taken at the San Marco di Zingonia hospital in Bergamo, patients are seen lying on beds which are crammed into the corridor of the intensive care unit. 

The video shows patients on ventilators in overcrowded rooms, showing how the crisis has overwhelmed even the high-quality health service in northern Italy.

Italian media says the hospital is handling a large number of urgent Covid-19 cases, and many patients are said to have serious breathing problems.