Italy’s death toll now exceeds 1,800 people, the highest anywhere in the world outside China. Experts say Canada can take lessons from what happened there.
Codogno, Italy, looks like a ghost town.
Residents of the community of only 16,000 people have been ordered to stay in their homes. It’s believed this is where the Italian coronavirus outbreak began on Feb. 18, when a 38-year old athletic male with breathing problems was repeatedly turned away from his doctor’s office and the local hospital without being tested. He unknowingly spread COVID-19 to dozens of people over several days.
According to a hospital administrator in the area, Dr. Lorenzo Casani, “We know that ‘Patient One’ went in and out at least three or four times from the emergency room, so he spread the virus to other patients and also to the health-care workers.”
In Italy, the virus spread quickly from the smaller towns in the north to the big city of Milan. Then it exploded.
“Well you know, because we were watching it on TV from China, we saw them building up two hospitals in a week and I said ‘Well this is crazy,'” said Dr. Giacomo Grasselli, who leads Milan’s COVID-19 task force.
“Now, I completely understand why they did that.”
Grasselli briefly untied the surgical mask he’s been wearing nearly constantly in the hospital as he spoke to CBC News about what it’s been like to work in Italy’s hospitals during the outbreak.
“It’s like a bomb of patients that blows and you just come out every day from 50, 60, 70 new patients and it’s a challenge of how to find a place for each one of them.
“So it’s incredible what’s happening and it’s a very bad experience, very bad experience,” he said.
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