Italian hospitals are so ‘overwhelmed’ by Coronavirus that strokes are going untreated and elderly patients are not even being assessed, a doctor has said – while another medic said people in the UK and US should be panicking more.

Doctors in Italy have been forced into life-or-death decisions over who should receive intensive care, with virus cases piling up around the country.
One Italian medic warned that the public may be underestimating the ‘epidemiological disaster’ because of warnings not to panic.

D. Macchini said he ‘understands the need not to panic’ but said he ‘shuddered’ because the ‘message of the danger of what is happening does not reach people’.
‘The war has literally exploded and battles are uninterrupted day and night,’ Daniele Macchini said in a lengthy Facebook post. ‘Cases are multiplying, we arrive at a rate of 15-20 hospitalisations per day all for the same reason.

‘The results of the swabs now come one after the other: positive, positive, positive. Suddenly the emergency room is collapsing.’

Non-coronavirus cases are being sidelined with some medics being given a ‘leaflet’ and told to perform specialist tasks for which they are not qualified, while some patients over 65 are not even being assessed, the doctor said.