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ROME (AP) – As the world says goodbye – or good riddance – to 2020, a year in which the pandemic has caused hardship and suffering for billions of people, some of those who have battled the virus in the front row fought even as the stopwatch passed midnight.
At the Casalpalocco Covid 3 hospital on the outskirts of Rome, doctors and nurses barely seemed to register the new year as they tended to treat 100 patients with severe to critical illness from coronavirus infections .
In an intensive care unit, all but one of a dozen beds were occupied. Medical staff calmly attended to patients lying in dimly lit rooms, distributed medication, checked breathing apparatus, and completed medical records.
“This one (New Years Eve) is a surreal night, just like Christmas, just like Epiphany, as was the past of Easter and all other holidays,” said Dr Paolo Petrassi, the coordinator of the night shift. “It’s, say, a vacation detached from what was once the real world, as we have always known it.”
The 53-year-old told the experience now familiar to so many doctors around the world who have had to treat COVID patients: having to constantly monitor patients and manage their condition, each with their own set of complicated issues.
More than 83 million coronavirus infections have been confirmed worldwide and more than 1.8 million deaths. Much like the elderly, medical staff have been hit particularly hard, struggling to save patients even as their own colleagues fell ill from an illness hardly anyone could have imagined a year ago.
“Everything was unexpected,” Petrassi told The Associated Press.
Italy was the first epicenter of the pandemic in Europe in the spring. Images of Italian nurses and doctors, exhausted as they briefly removed their protective gear, became a grim omen of what was to happen to their colleagues in Spain, France, the United States and elsewhere, months later.
Last month, after a summer in which Italy seemed to have pushed back the scourge, it again became the country with the highest death toll in Europe.. And once again the sad reality reflected in the eyes Italian medical staff.
“We are now almost reaching 12 months of this pandemic and unfortunately we still don’t have a chance to say it’s over,” Petrassi said. “We only have the hope of mass vaccination which we hope will help control this worrying phenomenon.”
European regulators approved the first vaccine shortly before Christmas. European Union countries began administering the vaccines on December 27, but it will be a long time before a significant number of the bloc’s 450 million people are vaccinated.
Experts say at least 60 to 70 percent of the population must be vaccinated to prevent the virus from taking hold.
Petrassi is hoping the COVID nightmare will end soon.
“We all live in uncertainty, but at the same time, we hope, and we all do our best,” he said. “We use all our professional and physical resources, our knowledge, our conscience, giving time with our families, our own and the free time of our loved ones.
“We are investing all of this so that all these efforts are not in vain.”
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Follow AP’s pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic and https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccines and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak
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