Italy sees death toll fall for second successive day

After two weeks of lockdown, Italy may have hit the peak of its coronavirus outbreak.

A mourner and a priest wait for a coffin at a cemetery in Bolgare, Lombardy, on Monday. Picture: AFP

Italy may have hit the peak of its coronavirus outbreak after two weeks of lockdown as its death toll dropped for the second consecutive day.

There have now been 6077 deaths, the highest in the world, but crucially the daily total of 602 on Monday was again lower than Saturday’s peak of 793.

New cases registered totalled 4789, lower than the 6557 recorded on Saturday, further evidence that closing shops and restaurants and strictly limiting travel since March 10 may be paying off.

“We are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel,” Giulio Gallera, the health chief in Italy’s hardest hit region, Lombardy, said.

“Today is the first positive day in a hard month.”

He emphasised it was the ­moment to be “even more concentrated” in observing Italy’s lockdown measures.

The growth rate in infections in Germany and Austria also began to flatten, indicating that lockdowns there are having an effect. In Italy, a 95-year-old grandmother in Modena became the oldest person in the country to ­recover from the virus.

Italy remains in desperate need of doctors and ventilators as hospitals struggle to keep alive 3204 virus patients in intensive care. Ten cargo aircraft flew in from Russia on Sunday with half a million masks, 100 ventilators, and 100 doctors and virus experts to join medical staff from Cuba and China who are helping on Italian wards. After the government said it needed 300 Italian doctors to work in northern hospitals, 8000 volunteered. They will take the place of some of the 4824 doctors and nurses who have become infected, about 9 per cent of all Italian sufferers. The death toll among medical staff is now 18.

Among the victims was Gino Fasoli, 73, who survived being kidnapped by a tribe in Somalia in the 1980s while working there as a doctor. Three years after retiring, he volunteered in February to cover for absent GPs near Brescia in Lombardy. “The area was ­heavily contagious and the health authority made a huge mistake of handing him only one mask to wear every day,” his brother, Gab­rielle Fasoli, said.

Amid criticism that Lombardy has let the outbreak worsen by testing only people with serious symptoms, the neighbouring ­region of Veneto, which includes Venice, will test all medics, police officers, supermarket staff, bus drivers and retirement home staff.

Marco Ceresoli, 31, a doctor who volunteered to work at the Papa Giovanni XXIII hospital in hard-hit Bergamo in Lombardy, said he was prepared to become infected: “I’m just doing my job, which is curing people — it’s nothing exceptional.”

Dr Ceresoli said doctors worked in pairs, treating about 500 virus sufferers who are surviving by drawing oxygen from ventilators, masks or helmets. “There is a red line along the floor. On one side a ‘dirty’ doctor with protective clothes and a visor works with ­patients who need constant attention since their oxygen need can increase at any moment. On the other side of the line, a ‘clean’ doctor with only gloves and mask takes down details,” he said.

There was an acute sense of solitude among patients. “There are no visits and inside those helmets it’s horribly noisy and hot,” he added.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte tightened travel restrictions at the weekend and closed factories. Lombardy went a step further with €5000 ($9100) fines for ­people who join crowds in public.

The Times