Italy’s tally of coronavirus cases is probably ten times higher than the official figure of 64,000, the head of the agency collecting the data said today.
Angelo Borrelli said it was ‘credible’ to suggest that as many as 640,000 people could have been infected, because only a fraction of them have received the necessary tests.
Testing for the disease has often been limited to people seeking hospital care, with health services stretched to the limit by the scale of the outbreak.
The latest figures show that 6,077 people have died in Italy in barely a month, close to double the number of fatalities that China has suffered.
Military and medical personnel wearing protective suits and face masks transport coffins from a depot in Ponte San Pietro, near the hard-hid city of Bergamo in Italy
A masked Italian soldier stands in a road near where an army truck is standing in Ponte San Pietro, as soldiers are deployed to transport dead bodies in northern Italy
Doctors and nurses wearing protective suits treat coronavirus patients in the intensive care department of the VIzzolo Predabissi Hospital in Milan today
‘A ratio of one certified case out of every 10 is credible,’ Angelo Borrelli, the head of the Civil Protection Agency, told La Repubblica newspaper.
The missing cases could help to explain Italy’s high death rate of around 9.0 per cent, higher than Britain, France or Spain and much higher than Germany.
Borrelli said the biggest difficulty facing Italy was a shortage of masks and ventilators in intensive care.
Medical shortages have dogged the health system since the contagion first surfaced in the wealthy northern region of Lombardy on February 21.
Italy is trying to import stocks from abroad, but Borrelli said nations like India, Romania, Russia and Turkey had halted such sales.
‘We are contacting the embassies, but I fear no more masks will be arriving from abroad,’ he said.
Others have turned to more inventive solutions, with at least one startup firm converting commercial diving masks into emergency ventilators.
However, Borrelli also sounded cautious notes of optimism after two successive declines in Italy’s daily fatality rate.
The number of new deaths has come down from a world record 793 on Saturday to 651 on Sunday and 601 on Monday.
The number of new officially registered infections also fell from 6,557 on Saturday to 4,789 on Monday.
Masked personnel transport a coffin to an army truck in Ponte San Pietro, near the city of Bergamo where the local mortuary and crematorium have become overwhelmed
Army trucks transport coffins away from a depot in Ponte San Pietro, with Italy’s death toll piling up – although it has slowed in the last two days
‘The measures we took two weeks ago are starting to have an effect,’ Borrelli said, a fortnight after prime minister Giuseppe Conte ordered a nationwide quarantine.
The Lombardy region around Milan has begun imposing €5,000 (£4,600) fines on those outside without a good excuse.
Some lockdown measures were originally due to end this week, but are being extended well into April.
Borrelli said more data over the next few days will help understand ‘if the growth curve is really flattening.’
But Borrelli and other Italian medical officials have been extremely cautious to draw any definitive conclusions from the two-day drop.
Italy’s daily deaths are still higher than those officially recorded in China at the peak of its crisis in Wuhan’s central Hubei province.
They are also higher than those seen anywhere else in the world, forcing the army to transport coffins as cemeteries and mortuaries are overwhelmed by the crisis.
The health chief did not seek to blame anyone or any single factor for the fact that Italy is now at the forefront of the global crisis.
‘From the very start, people were behaving in a way that fuelled the national problem,’ Borrelli said.
A uniformed soldier wearing gloves and a face masks walks away from a truck where personnel in full protective suits were loading coffins from a depot in Ponte San Pietro
Medical workers wearing protective suits look at a screen in the intensive care department of the Vizzolo Predabissi Hospital in Milan today
A medical professional works by a patient’s bedside which is surrounded by medical equipment at the hospital in Milan today
But he did point to a Champions League match between Italy’s Atalanta and Spain’s Valencia’s football clubs in Milan’s San Siro stadium on February 19 as a particularly egregious mistake.
It was attended by 40,000 fans who celebrated the local team’s win deep into the night.
‘We can now say, with hindsight, that it was potentially a detonator,’ Berrelli said of the match.
The epidemic looks certain to leave Italy’s already fragile economy in tatters, with most businesses ordered to shut down.
Most big global banks think Italy has already entered a deep economic recession that could be more severe than anything seen in decades.
The government wants a bailout fund for eurozone states to be deployed without restrictions – a demand that puts Rome at loggerheads with richer northern nations.
Currently, the so-called European Stability Mechanism (ESM) can help euro zone countries only on condition they adjust their economic policies to overcome the problems that led them to seek financial assistance.
But deputy economy Minister Antonio Misiani said the coronavirus emergency made such restrictions redundant.
‘The only acceptable conditionality is that of using the ESM resources to manage the health and economic emergency,’ he said, setting up a possible battle with Brussels over how best to emerge from the crisis.
Italian priest, 72, dies of coronavirus after giving away a respirator to a younger patient
Giuseppe Berardelli, 72, from Casigno in Italy’s hardest-hit Lombardy region, died in a local hospital
By Chris Pleasance for MailOnline
An Italian priest died of coronavirus after giving a respirator that his parishioners bought for him to a younger patient, it has been revealed.
Giuseppe Berardelli, 72, from Casigno in Italy’s hardest-hit Lombardy region, died in a local hospital in recent days after being diagnosed with the virus.
Berardelli had been given a respirator – which are in desperately short supply – by parishioners concerned about his health but decided to give it to a younger patient who he didn’t know but was struggling to breathe because of the virus.
The exact age and condition of that patient is not known, but younger patients who are able to access respirators have a much greater chance of survival.
The extraordinary case was revealed by Jesuit priest James Martin, from the US, who is also a consult to the Vatican’s Secretariat for Communications.
Italian news magazine Araberara first reported the story.
Berardelli – a well-liked priest who had underlying health conditions – was remembered for his charity and his love of motorcycles.
James Martin, a Jesuit priest from America and a Vatican consult, revealed news of Berardelli’s death on Twitter – praising him as a ‘Martyr of Charity’
Lombardy is at the centre of Italy’s coronavirus crisis, reporting more than 300 deaths yesterday and accounting for almost half of the nation’s total (pictured, pallbearers take the coffin of a victim for burial in a cemetery in Lombardy)
Praising him on Twitter, Martin wrote: “Greater love has no person…” (Jn 15:13)
‘He is a “Martyr of Charity,” a saint like St. Maximilian Kolbe, who in Auschwitz volunteered to take the place of a condemned man with a family, and was killed.
There are at least 60 priests among Italy’s 6,077 virus victims, the majority of whom were over the age of 70, the Catholic Herald reported.
During a Mass in early March, Pope Francis, 83, called on Italian priests to ‘have courage to go out to the sick’ amid the rapidly growing pandemic.
‘We pray to God also for our priests, so they have courage to go out to the sick, bringing the strength of the Word of God and the Eucharist,’ he said.
‘To accompany the medical workers and volunteers in the work they are doing.’
The names of 51 diocesan priests who passed away after contracting coronavirus were published by the Avvenire newspaper on Sunday.
The publication also noted that a further nine deaths had been reported in religious communities across Italy.
Some of these priests had underlying health conditions, it was said, and the youngest to die was 53-year-old Paolo Camminati – the parish priest of Our Lady of Lourdes in Piacenza.
Five further priests who tested positive for Covid-19 have also reportedly passed away in the same city.