Since the beginning of the outbreak in Italy, one hundred Italian doctors have lost their lives due to the deadly virus.
Everyday medics are battling in the ‘unfair fight’ with COVID-19. The tragic news about the dozens of doctors who have been killed by the virus has been announced by the Italian health association FNOMCeO on Thursday, April 9th. As Al Jazeera reports, a spokesman for the association told the AFP News Agency:
“The number of doctors who have died because of COVID-19 is 100 – perhaps even 101 at the moment, unfortunately.”
Due to the shortage of healthcare workers, the Italian government was forced to seek help from already retired medics. Sadly, the shocking number of 100 doctors who have died of coronavirus includes some of the already retired healthcare workers who were helping their colleagues to save the lives of thousands of COVID-19 patients.
Moreover, Italian media reports that approximately 30 nurses and nursing assistants have also passed away due to coronavirus complications. The president of FNOMCeO, Filippo Anelli, stated in the association’s website:
“We can longer allow our doctors, our health workers, to be sent to fight without any protection against the virus. It is an unfair fight.”
Anelli points out the personal protective equipment shortage as one of the main reasons why so many doctors have been infected and have died of COVID-19.
Meanwhile, a distressing statistic from Rome’s ISS public health institute was shared. According to them, about 10 percent of the ones infected with coronavirus in Italy are people who work in the healthcare industry.
Italy remains one of the countries with the most coronavirus victims since the beginning of the pandemic. By April 10th, the confirmed COVID-19 cases in Italy are nearly 140,000, with almost 18,000 deaths. On March 27, the daily death toll in the European country reached its peak when 969 people have died of the virus in only one day.
