Coronavirus: reports of Italy emergency departments ‘collapsing’

There are alarming reports from Italy of hospital emergency departments ‘collapsing’ under pressure from coronavirus.

An elderly patient is attended in one of the emergency structures that were set up to ease procedures outside the hospital of Brescia, Northern Italy. Picture: AP

There are alarming reports from Italy of hospital emergency departments “collapsing” and of internal refugees from the country’s north potentially spreading coronavirus to the impoverished south.

One intensive care doctor in Bergamo, northeast of Milan, is quoted on social media describing his hospital as struggling to cope, with staff infecting their families and ventilators becoming “gold”.

“Suddenly, the ER is collapsing,” Dr Daniele Macchini is quoted as saying in a Facebook post, which The Australian has been unable to verify but which is circulating via both social and mainstream media.

“…Every ventilator becomes like gold. Those in operating theatres that have now suspended their non-urgent activity become intensive care places that did not exist before.

“The staff is exhausted…We no longer see our families for fear of infecting them. Some of us have already become infected…Some of our colleagues who are infected also have infected relatives.”

Italy is the hardest-hit country in Europe, with 827 fatalities and nearly 12,500 people infected by the virus. Over 1,000 patients are in intensive care.

Most cases are in the Lombardy region in the country’s wealthy north, but virologists have warned the disease risks becoming an epidemic in the poorer south too.

The leak to the media on Saturday of the imminent “lockdown” of a large area of the north as a containment measure sparked panic and prompted people to flee south overnight -- potentially carrying the disease with them.

With even Lombardy’s first-class health system creaking under the strain, there is concern hospitals in southern regions, desiccated by years of budget cuts, will be overwhelmed.

“The south is less prepared, and could pay a serious price for it,” Cardarelli’s director Giuseppe Longo, 63, told AFP. “The state has asked us to get ready. We are employing hundreds of new doctors, nurses and medical staff.”

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, who extended the “lockdown” to the whole country this week, has described the crisis as “Italy’s darkest hour”.

• Wire agencies