The regional government pushed back at the criticism and defended its efforts. The Lombardy doctors’ association issued a blistering letter April 7 to regional authorities listing seven “errors” in their handling of the crisis, key among them the lack of testing for medical personnel, the lack of protective equipment and the lack of data about the contagion.
“Obviously for our close contact with patients, it wasn’t the correct way to protect ourselves.” “The region was extremely behind in giving us protective equipment and it was inadequate, because the first time, they gave us 10 surgical masks and gloves,” said Dr. 21 case, doctors didn’t understand the unusual way COVID-19 could present itself, with some patients experiencing a rapid decline in their ability to breathe. Epidemiologists now say the virus had been circulating widely in Lombardy since early January, if not before.ĭoctors treating pneumonia in January and February didn’t know it was the coronavirus, since the symptoms were so similar and the virus was still believed to be largely confined to China. 31, and even put scanners in airports to check arrivals for fever. Italy was the first European country to halt all air traffic with China on Jan. Here’s a look at the perfect storm of what went wrong in Lombardy, based on interviews and briefings with doctors, union representatives, mayors and virologists, as well as reports from Italy’s Superior Institute of Health, national statistics agency ISTAT and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which advises developed economies on policy.
One WHO official said it was a “miracle” they saved as many as they did. Prosecutors, meanwhile, are deciding whether to lay any criminal blame for the hundreds of dead in nursing homes, many of whom don’t even figure into Lombardy’s official death toll of 13,325, half of Italy’s total.īy contrast, Lombardy’s front-line doctors and nurses are being hailed as heroes for risking their lives to treat the sick under extraordinary levels of stress, exhaustion, isolation and fear. Virologists and epidemiologists say what went wrong there will be studied for years, given how the outbreak overwhelmed a medical system long considered one of Europe’s best, while in the neighboring Veneto region, the impact was significantly more controlled. 21, at a time when the World Health Organization was still insisting the virus was “containable” and not nearly as infectious as the flu.īut there is also evidence that demographics and health care deficiencies collided with political and business interests to expose the 10 million people in the northern Italian region of Lombardy to COVID-19 in ways unseen anywhere else, particularly the most vulnerable in nursing homes. Italy’s first homegrown case was recorded Feb. Italy had the bad luck of being the first Western nation to be slammed by the outbreak, and its official total of 26,600 fatalities lags behind only the U.S. ROME (AP) - As Italy prepares to emerge from the West’s first and most extensive coronavirus lockdown, it is increasingly clear that something went terribly wrong in Lombardy, the hardest-hit region in Europe’s hardest-hit country. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated. This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated.