Monday, March 16, 2020

ELDERLY ITALIANS WILL BE LEFT TO DIE FROM CORONAVIRUS

Video shows how newspaper obituary page has expanded from one to ten pages in Italian town where 146 people have died in one week as secret memo reveals over-80s could be 'left to die' and country's death toll rises to 1,441

Daily Mail
March 15, 2020

The footage, from Bergamo, Lombardy comes after 146 died in the city in the space of a week as the coroanvirus ravages Italy.

In the footage, a man speaking Italian zooms in on the front page of L'Eco di Bergamo that circulates in the city in the hard-hit Lombardy region. After showing the date of the paper, February 9, he turns to the obituaries to reveal a page and a half of death notices published. On that date, Italy had recorded just three confirmed cases of the disease caused by the coronavirus.

He then holds up an edition of the same newspaper from March 13, when the total number of cases had skyrocketed to 17,600, including 1,266 deaths. Slowly turning the pages and counting, he shows 10 full pages of obituaries.

It comes as a secret document prepared by a crisis management unit in Turin suggested that victims will be denied access to intensive care if they are aged over 80 or in poor health if pressure on beds increase.

The document, produced by the civil protection deparment of the Piedmont region, one of those hardest hit, says: 'The criteria for access to intensive therapy in cases of emergency must include age of less than 80 or a score on the Charlson comorbidity Index [which indicates how many other medical conditions the patient has] of less than 5.'

1 comment:

bob walsh said...

I used to think that Italy was a civilized place, at least for the last 65 years or so.