Coronavirus: Soldiers step in as death toll in Italy passes China’s

Italy’s death toll from the coronavirus has overtaken that of China for the first time.

Medics tend to a patient in the intensive care unit of the hospital of Brescia, Italy, on Thursday. Picture: AP

A convoy of army trucks was called in to remove corpses from an overwhelmed Italian crematorium as the country’s death toll from the coronavirus overtook that of China for the first time.

Italy announced late on Thursday that 3405 of its citizens had died from the disease, overhauling China’s 3245 deaths and making it the country with the most coronavirus fatalities in the world.

Total cases in Italy reached 41,035 after a rise of 5322 in 24 hours. Of the total, 4440 people had recovered.

A convoy of 15 trucks carrying about 60 coffins left the crematorium in Bergamo, in the Lombardy region, which has been unable to cremate victims fast enough despite working 24 hours a day.

The dead will be distributed to parts of Italy that have suffered less than Bergamo, the country’s worst-hit province with 4645 cases and more than 500 deaths.

As Italy’s death toll continued to rise, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte told the Corriere della Sera newspaper a nationwide lockdown would probably be ­extended. Schools have been closed and travel restrictions are in place until April 3, while most shops are shut until March 25.

Mr Conte said he hoped that the contagion would peak in a few days, but warned: “We will not be able to return immediately to life as it was before.”

Education Minister Lucia ­Azzolina said that schools would only reopen if there was “certainty of absolute safety”.

Regional governors in the hard-hit north called for tougher lockdown rules, including a ban on jogging.

“I hope there will soon be measures to restrict people jogging or going out for walks,” Luca Zaia, president of Veneto, the region that includes Venice, said.

“I’m sorry about that but the ­alternative is intensive care, hospitalisation and contagion.”

The deputy head of the Chinese Red Cross, Sun Shuopeng, who has flown to Italy with Chinese doctors to help understaffed Italian hospitals, said he was surprised that Italy was still allowing some people to go to work.

After a first group of Chinese doctors flew to Rome last week, a second flight arrived in Milan on Wednesday carrying seven doctors and three nurses, as well as 400,000 masks and 40 ventilators donated by the Chinese government, a gesture of thanks for Italian aid sent at the peak of the Wuhan epidemic last month.

In the province of Brescia in Lombardy, which is now experiencing more new cases than Bergamo, the mayor said the outbreak was “our 9/11”. Emilio Del Bono added: “That date represents for Americans the collapse of certainty, pain for an entire community and a psychological blow.”

Italy’s civil protection agency said that the average age of Italian victims was 80 and that 70 per cent were men. Almost all had underlying medical conditions.

Italy’s high death rate of more than 8 per cent of all sufferers — about double China’s — has been blamed on the country having the oldest population in Europe, with 23 per cent over 65.

Old people’s homes are ­especially vulnerable, despite ­attempts to isolate residents by ­enforcing a ban on visitors.

At one home in Mediglia, near Milan, 25 residents have died in the past 23 days.

Corriere della Sera reported that about 40 per cent of the 200 residents at the Virgilio Ferrari home in Milan had a high fever and a bad cough, both symptoms of the virus. It was claimed that they were not being cared for properly because many staff were also infected and others were staying home out of fear.

“You cannot stay a yard away from people in this job. The elderly need to be washed, cared for and helped,” one employee said.

Bergamo mayor Giorgio Gorisaid: “There are significant numbers of people who have died but whose death hasn’t been attributed to the coronavirus because they died at home or in a nursing home and so weren’t swabbed.”

A source at Italy’s Health Ministry added: “Anywhere you have old people living together you have a potential cluster, and unlike the schools you cannot close them down.”

The Times