Italy breaks ceiling of 50,000 coronavirus deaths, doctors return to dilemma of who to save or let die

Although 40 days remain, Italians cling to a Christmas dream as normal as possible, but reality shows that the pandemic can enter a terrible third wave if the firm reins of controls to prevent contagion are not maintained. This Monday 630 deaths were recorded, bringing the total to 50,453 dead with 22,930 infected.

Italy was for months the hardest-hit country in Europe and is now second behind Great Britain. The pressure is enormous to oxygenate the national spirit with measures that make it less harsh “Christmas” what’s coming, what are the holidays very expensive Italians.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said that if the rigorous controls continue and the opening measures at the end of the year, the parties must be specified according to the movement of the epidemic curve in the next two weeks, which according to some scientists gives signs of having reached the top and entered a plateau.

Conte explained that there are no illusions and that a mistake could explode in the winter of January a third wave of worse consequences, as it coincides with the peak of the annual flu epidemic.

The deputy director of the World Health Organization (WHO), Radaro Guerra, explained that “the numbers tell us that there is a slowdown in the curves, but not a decrease in cases of contagion. “It may be that in some countries, they are increasing more slowly, but these data are not enough to reassure us.” Guerra said that “Christmas should be sober and calm” without celebrations or excess of any kind.

Friday December 4, the Italian government will announce reductions restrictions aimed at avoiding a coup de grace for traders and the catering sector, which are heavily dependent on end-of-year invoicing. Prime Minister Conte said that despite all the problems, the government remains committed to “growing the economy”. The normal turnover of gifts “under the tree” in Italy normally exceeds five billion euros.

Government measures they will lengthen the hours companies and could lead to the start of the national curfew at 11 or midnight during the holidays, but it is under consideration to deploy strong police contingents with the collaboration of the military to prevent shopping and Christmas celebrations in the streets and squares. deadly crowds that will cause another explosion of contagion.

What happened in the summer is unlikely to happen again, when the epidemic’s sharp decrease thanks to a rigid 72-day quarantine, triggered in June, July and August the disorder in places of movement, with regions, like Sardinia, which have decided to reopen dance halls and other nightclubs, allow the massive presence of vacationers on the beaches, with dances and other excesses.

The result is that in September the curve of the epidemic began to rise dangerously, anticipating the second wave of the epidemic, announced for fall winter. In just one month, the current hell has broken out. The infected were 978 at the end of September and more than 30,000 per day at the end of October. They even reached over 40 thousand.

The government has decided that the school holidays at the end of this month will be extended in December and do not end until after the feast of kings, January 6. The measure has sparked many protests from schools, but it is helping to slow the millionaire movement of students, teachers and families at the end of the year.

The virulence of the new wave of the coronavirus is also measured by figures like this: in one month, there were 27 thousand infections of doctors and nurses in the hospital. Nine hundred died.

The pressure on the front line of the fight against the virus, led by the hospital system, is terrible. Fifty emergency physicians and resuscitators from San Carlo and San Paolo hospitals in Milan, at the center of the battle against the corona virus, which causes more than 8,000 daily infections in the region of Lombardy, signed a declaration of protest because the saturation of the beds and , in particular, in the area of ​​intensive care, “they force us to make decisions that are neither ethically nor clinically tolerable”.

We look back at the dilemmas of the first wave in March and April, when resuscitators in intensive care had to decide which patients were placed in intensive care and which were left outside, closest to death. A directive informed doctors at these hospitals that they must choose “To the sick in better conditions to survive.”

It is still unclear what progress has been made during these months in providing beds in special systems to ensure patient survival, especially tubes containing oxygen due to the ferocious double pneumonia caused by the viruses in many. Until Sunday, there were 3,800 inmates in intensive care, already nearly 4,068, which was the record for the first wave, on April 3. There are regions that have reserves of free special beds, but others do not.

Rome, correspondent

ap