Eleven people have now died as
Italy's coronavirus outbreak has spread from Lombardy and Veneto
to Sicily, Tuscany and Liguria Tuesday and Premier Giuseppe
Conte said the country would emerge form the crisis with its
head held high.
Eleven people have died from the coronavirus in Italy,
commissioner Angelo Borrelli told a press conference Tuesday.
He said three 80-year-olds had died in the last few hours.
Also, a 76-year-old woman died of the coronavirus in Treviso
on Tuesday after being admitted earlier in the day for
respiratory complications.
Some 322 people have been infected with the virus in Italy,
said the civil protection chief.
The number of those infected in Sicily has risen to three, he
said.
Borrelli, who is also civil protection chief, added that two
suspected cases in Tuscany have been confirmed including a
63-year-old businessman in Florence.
He also said there was a suspected case in Sicily that is
subject to the final checks.
The Sicilian case is that of tourist from the northern city
of Bergamo who tested positive in Palermo after being admitted
to the Sicilian city's Cervello hospital with flu symptoms.
So far seven people with the coronavirus have died in Italy -
all of them over 60 and several with pre-existing conditions.
The worst-hit region is Lombardy, where six people have died
and 212 people have contracted the deadly disease.
There has been one death and over 38 cases in Veneto, 23 in
Emilia-Romagna, three in Piedmont, three in Lazio, one in
Bolzano and now two in Tuscany and one in Sicily.
The first case of coronavirus has been registered in Liguria,
the regional government said Tuesday.
It is a woman tourist from came from one of the 'red zones'
in Lombardy and tested positive in Alassio, Liguria Governor
Giovanni Toti said.
Toti said isolation measures had been taken in an Alassio
hotel.
He said the woman had come into contact, without protection,
with staff at an ER at Albenga and had now been moved to a
hospital in Genoa, where she is in isolation.
An Italian doctor also tested positive on Tenerife.
The Lazio cases are that of an Italian researcher who was
brought back from Wuhan and has recovered and two Chinese
tourists being treated at Rome's Spallanzani hospital, also out
of the woods.
There are 109 people in hospital, plus another 29 in
intensive care, while 137 are in isolation at home.
Only 3% of Italian coronavirus patients have died, and all of
them had pre-existing conditions, Walter Ricciardi of the World
Health Organization told a Rome press conference Tuesday.
"We must scale back this great alarm," said Ricciardi, a
former director at Italy's Higher Health Institute (ISS).
"Of 100 sick people, 80 get well of their own accord, 15 have
serious but manageable problems, 5% are extremely serious, of
which 3% die".
"Furthermore, as you know, all the people who died already
had serious health conditions".
He said the alarm "is right, is not to be underestimated, but
the disease must be placed within the correct terms".
Italy will emerge with its head held high from the
coronavirus emergency, Premier Giuseppe Conte told a press
conference at the civil protection department in Rome Tuesday.
He said the emergency had given the government "greater
determination" to boost the economy amid reports the virus may
help trigger a recession this year.
Lombardy Governor Attilio Fontana hit back hard on Tuesday
after Conte said that the failure of a hospital at Codogno near
Lodi to follow the proper procedure contributed to the spread of
the coronavirus.
"There was a hotspot and it spread from there in part due to
the management of a hospital that was not done entirely
according to the prudent protocols that are recommended in these
cases," Conte said.
"This contributed to the spread".
"I hope this is a slip of the tongue that came out without
him realising," Fontana told RAI radio.
"Otherwise it means the government is starting to spin out of
control.
"The comments are groundless and unacceptable".
Lombardy Welfare Chief Giulio Gallera went even further.
"It was an unacceptable comment from an ignorant person
because he is ignorant of what the protocols set by the Higher
Health Institute (ISS) were," Gallera said.
"We have slavishly following what the ISS decided and the
(health) ministry's guidelines".
Fontana later said he had "patched things up with Conte"
after the premier reportedly admitted he had been wrong to
criticise the Codogno hospital.
"Conte himself corrected himself, (saying that) the hospital
in Codogno did not make any mistakes", said Fontana.
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