Coronavirus: Italy’s hospitals overflow with the dead as toll tops 1,000

Hospitals in Italy’s hard-hit Lombardy region, already overwhelmed trying to care for the increasing number of people infected by the Covid-19 coronavirus in limited intensive care units, are overflowing with the dead.

Lombardy’s top health care official, Giulio Gallera, said at the request of the hospitals, the region had simplified the bureaucracy needed to process death certificates and bury the dead, with the death toll in Lombardy alone reaching 617 by late on Wednesday.

Italian officials have halted both weddings and funerals for a month in their efforts to control Europe’s worst coronavirus outbreak. By Thursday, the country had reported 15,113 infections and has seen 1,016 deaths overall.

Gallera noted that with no funerals allowed, the process of cemetery burials was moving faster than before.

The Vatican on Thursday took the unprecedented step of closing all Catholic churches across Rome to stem the spread of the outbreak. The papal vicar for Rome said the churches would reopen when a broader Italian government crackdown on public gatherings expires on April 3.

Catholic faithful have been exempted from the obligation to attend Sunday Mass.

The Vatican had spent days resisting having to take the drastic measure of shuttering places of worship in the overwhelmingly Catholic country. It closed its museums and even the Saint Peter’s Basilica – parts of its soaring dome designed by Michelangelo – to tourists as the death toll continued to mount.

But some church buildings in the country will stay open as long as the faithful follow government regulations and remain a metre apart while inside.

Outside Europe’s worst-hit country, other governments are stepping up measures to contain the disease.

In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned on Thursday that many more families would see their loved ones die from the disease, as the government’s chief scientific adviser said Britain likely has as many as 10,000 people infected.

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Britain and the EU also agreed to cancel face-to-face trade negotiations planned for next week in London due to the outbreak.

At a meeting of the government’s emergency committee on Thursday, Johnson moved Britain’s response to the outbreak to the so-called “delay phase”, aimed at putting off the peak until the summer months, ending a phase of outright containment.

The British plan for dealing with the outbreak has three main phases – containment, delay and mitigation. The delay phase includes consideration of so-called social distancing measures such as more home-working, reducing large scale gatherings and closing schools.

“It’s going to spread further,” Johnson said at a news conference, flanked by the government’s top scientific and medical advisers. “I must level with you, level with the British public – more families, many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time.”

The number of confirmed cases of coronavirus across the United Kingdom rose 29 per cent to 590 over the past 24 hours. Ten people with coronavirus have died in the UK.

“There are currently about 590 cases identified in the UK and there are more than 20 patients on intensive care units,” chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance said. “If you calculate what that really means in terms of the total number, it is much more likely that you have somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 people infected at the moment.”

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Vallance said Britain was currently on a trajectory about four weeks behind Italy, which has reported more than 15,000 cases and 1,000 deaths. He predicted the peak of coronavirus cases in Britain may be at least 10 to 14 weeks away.

France will from next week close all crèches, schools and universities, President Emmanuel Macron said in a televised address on Thursday, as he described the outbreak as France’s biggest public health crisis in a century.

Ireland is to shut schools, universities and childcare facilities until March 29 and restrict mass gatherings, according to acting Prime Minister Leo Varadkar.

Denmark, which has 514 confirmed cases of the virus, entered a virtual lockdown on Thursday. All schools – public and private – and day care facilities will be closed from Monday.

All public servants who do not perform critical functions have been ordered to stay home for the next two weeks. Hospitals and nursing homes have been urged to impose tighter restrictions on visits. All indoor cultural institutions, libraries and leisure facilities are closed.

Norway and Lithuania are shutting down kindergartens, schools and universities for at least two weeks and the Norwegian government says employees at work must be at least one metre apart.

Associated Press and Reuters