More Than 100 Medics Have Died in Italy’s Coronavirus Crisis

More than 100 medics have died from coronavirus in Italy as many struggle with the trauma of seeing their colleagues die.

Traumatised hospital staff have asked ‘who will be the next’ after 80 doctors and 21 nurses died from the bug.

Two nurses took their own lives since the outbreak, which has killed more than 15,800 and infected 124,600 in Italy, began.

A total of 300 medics were infected in one hospital in Lombardy – the area worst affected by the bug, while 12,000 hospital staff have been diagnosed nationwide.

The high infection rate has largely been blamed on a lack of protective equipment at the start of the outbreak.

Director of the Infectious Diseases Unit at Spedali Civili hospital Professor Francesco Castelli told Sky News: ‘We were asking each other who will be the next and that, of course, is psychologically demanding because apart from colleagues, we are friends.

‘All of us have some kind of concern about bringing the contagion back to our homes.

He added: ‘If you put all that together… the workload, the fatigue, the tiredness… that is fairly psychologically demanding.’

In Lombardy, many are dying due to symptoms going unchecked and phone-consultations not being sufficient enough.

It took Silvia Bertuletti 11 days of frantic phone calls to persuade a doctor to visit her 78-year-old father Alessandro, who was gripped by fever and struggling for breath.

When an on-call physician did go to her house near Bergamo on the evening of March 18, it was too late.

Alessandro Bertuletti was pronounced dead at 1.10 am on March 19, 10 minutes before an ambulance called hours earlier arrived.

The only medication he had been prescribed over the phone was a mild painkiller and a broad-spectrum antibiotic.

Mr Bertuletti, 48, said: ‘My father was left to die alone, at home, without help.

‘We were simply abandoned. No one deserves an end like that.’