Coronavirus: Italian Doctor Dies After Working Without Gloves due to Shortage

A view taken on March 20, 2020 in Cremona, southeast of Milan, shows Healthcare Director o
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A 57-year-old Italian doctor working without gloves due to a shortage at his hospital has died of the coronavirus. “They’ve run out,” said the doctor of the glove shortage in one of his last interviews with the media before he succumbed to the Chinese virus.

“It’s a war,” said 57-year-old doctor Marcello Natali of Italy’s coronavirus crisis before he died of the disease, according to a report by Euronews.

The report added that the doctor — who was working in a hospital in Codogno, Italy — had tested positive for the Wuhan virus, and was hospitalized in Cremona before being transferred to Milan after developing double pneumonia.

Codogno is located in the northern region of Lombardy — the nation’s worst-infected region, as well as the epicenter of Europe’s coronavirus epidemic.

In one of the Natali’s final interviews with Euronews, the doctor said that he had been working without gloves due to a shortage of them at the hospital.

“They have run out,” Natali said.

Before he died, the doctor had also mentioned that 14 out of 35 doctors were in quarantine or hospitalized as of February 28.

“We weren’t prepared for the coronavirus,” said Natali. “As doctors of the post antibiotic era, we grew up thinking that a pill against everything was enough.”

The Italian Federation of General Practitioners — which confirmed Natali’s death — noted that the doctor had been suffering from double pneumonia due to the coronavirus, reports Euronews.

“The situation has not gotten better since end of February,” said Paola Pedrini, regional secretary at the federation. “We received some masks, some glove kits, nothing else.”

“A mask that should last half a day, here lasts a week,” she added.

“We work a lot over the phone, when possible, to avoid the spread of the virus and getting in contact with asymptomatic people who still carry the virus,” said Pedrini.

Pedrini also told Euronews that 110 doctors out of 600 are sick in the just province of Bergamo alone.

On Thursday, newly released data from Italy’s Civil Protection revealed that 427 people had died of the Chinese virus in just the last 24 hours alone, bringing the nation’s overall death toll to 3,405 and surpassing China’s official death toll, as reported by the Chinese communist government.

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.

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