Via The Globe and Mail, a report by Eric Reguly: Italian doctors’ fatalities reach tragic levels as they fight COVID-19 in overburdened hospitals. Excerpt, with my bolding:
In Italy they’re known as the Camici Bianchi – the White Coats – and they’re falling in the line of duty in tragic numbers.
The White Coats are the doctors who have died treating COVID-19 patients in overburdened hospitals and other health facilities. By Friday, 74 had died since Italy recorded its first coronavirus death on Feb. 21. No other country – including China, where the pandemic began in December – has seen so many doctors succumb to the disease.
Italians are treating them as heroes and know their names. The Italian National Federation of Orders of Surgeons and Dentists (FNOMCeO) publishes a list of the deceased doctors on its website under a black ribbon. The dates of their deaths and their medical specialties are all the information that is given. Profiles of the prominent ones fill the news and obituary pages of Italian newspapers.
The doctor fatalities are sure to rise because of the sheer intensity of the COVID-19 outbreak in Italy – which recorded 14,681 deaths by Friday night – the recruitment of elderly, retired doctors and shortages of high-quality personal protective equipment (PPE). By the end of the week, about 10,000 Italian hospital workers of every description had tested positive for the novel coronavirus. That’s about 8 per cent of Italy’s 120,000 cases. Published medical reports suggest that infections among Chinese medical workers was half that rate.
Serious questions are being asked in Italy and elsewhere in Europe about why so many Italian doctors died and what lessons can be learned from their sacrifices, even if it seems certain that medical workers’ daily exposure to COVID-19 hospital wards means that none of them can be fully shielded from the highly contagious disease.
I'm posting the Italian doctors' website on the COVID-19 Links list.
