There is no reason to believe New York is not at the stage Italy was a couple of weeks ago
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https://www.itv.com/news/2020-03-11/...-milan-health/
- 11 March 2020 at 6:40pm
'Healthcare on brink of collapsing': Doctors share stories from inside the Italy coronavirus quarantine
two Milanese doctors speaking on WhatsApp about the situation at their hospitals.
The first identifies herself as Martina, but I believe she is Martina Crivellari, an intensive care cardiac anaesthesiologist at the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan.
She said: "There are a lot of young people in our Intensive Care Units (ICUs) - our youngest is a 38-year-old who had had no comorbidities (underlying health problems).
"A lot of patients need help with breathing but there are not enough ventilators.
"They've told us that starting from now we'll have to choose who to intubate - priority will go to the young or those without comorbidities.
"At Niguarda, the other big hospital in Milan, they are not intubating anyone over 60, which is really, really young."
She added: "This virus is so infectious that the only way to avoid a 'massacre' is to have the least number possible getting infected over the longest possible timescale.
"Right now, if we get 10,000 people in Italy in need of ventilators - when we only have 3,000 in the country - 7,000 people will die.
"Rome right now is like where Milan was 10 days ago. In 10 days there has been an incredible escalation.
"Lombardy, which has the best healthcare in the country, is collapsing, so I don’t dare to think what would happen in less efficient regions.
"We've had no critical cases among children but with children, viruses are much less aggressive - think chickenpox or measles.
"But the very young are crazy carriers.
"A child with no symptoms will go to visit its grandparents, and basically kill them. So it’s essential to avoid contact between them".
The other voice on the recording is a male doctor who we have so far not been able to identify, except that he works at Niguarda Hospital in Milan, one of the biggest in the city.
"We have closed down entire wards, and reduced the number of beds in traditional wards.
"All operations have been cancelled, GP surgeries closed so the that the GPs can come in and be ward doctors.
"The number of ICU beds has been tripled. There was even pressure to take over our Cardiac ICU."
"All the resuscitation bays are full. They’re having to triage, deciding who to intubate and who to let die."
He added: "You have no idea how many young people are here, I mean even 20-year-olds with no underlying conditions, in need of assisted breathing because of horrible pneumonia.
"There aren’t the resources to screen doctors for Covid-19 anymore - they’re just telling them 'stay home if you have symptoms, otherwise come to work'."
He continued: "Non-specialised medical graduates are being brought in.
"At Milan’s Policlinico hospital they are dealing with 50 new pneumonia cases every day".
The World Health Organisation ranks Italy second in the world for health care provision, with only France rated higher. The UK is 18th.
That is across the whole country, but Lombardy is the richest region in Italy and likely to be way ahead of some regions in the south.
And yet even a system as good as this is teetering on the brink.
How would the NHS cope if - or perhaps we should say when - our infection rate is as high as Italy's?
Let’s hope the Italian experience is giving us time to prepare.
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