Stark footage from a hospital in Bergamo — the Italian city hit worst by the novel coronavirus — shows doctors and nurses desperately fighting to control the outbreak.
The video, broadcast Thursday by Sky News from the Papa Giovanni XXIII hospital, shows an emergency-arrivals ward. It has been transformed into an intensive-care unit because the regular ICU is already full.
As of Friday morning, 4,645 people from Bergamo had tested positive for the virus, more cases than any other city or town in Italy, according to data published in the Corriere Della Sera newspaper. The exact number of deaths in Bergamo is not yet known.
The footage shows wards with more patients than they can handle. The staff seem overwhelmed.
The hospital’s head of emergency care, Dr. Roberto Cosentini, told Sky News: “It’s a very severe pneumonia, and so it’s a massive strain for every health system, because we see every day 50 to 60 patients who come to our emergency department with pneumonia, and most of them are so severe they need very high volumes of oxygen.”
He added: “And so we had to reorganize our emergency room and our hospital — three levels of intensive care.”
