Coronavirus: 4,824 Italian Healthcare Workers Are Infected

Healthcare workers comprise roughly one in ten of the confirmed coronavirus cases in Italy, according to data provided by the nation’s public health institution, which reveals that 4,824 healthcare professionals have become infected with the disease since the beginning of Italy’s crisis with the virus that originated in Wuhan, China.

According to Italy’s Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS) — the leading technical-scientific body of the nation’s National Health Service — a total of 4,824 Italian healthcare workers have become infected with the Chinese coronavirus, reports La Repubblica.

This means that roughly one in ten of the people infected with the disease in Italy are the nation’s very own healthcare workers.

The report added that the Gimbe foundation — an institution based out of Bolgona, Italy, focused on improving healthcare — is requesting that coronavirus testing be extended to all Italian healthcare workers, as the foundation fears that the data is widely underestimated.

Additionally, two more Italian doctors have died on Monday, which brings the nation’s coronavirus death toll among healthcare professionals to 19, according to Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata (ANSA).

The doctors were infectious disease specialist Leonardo Marchi from Cremona — located in Italy’s worst-infected Lombardy region — and retired doctor Manfredo Squeri from Parma — located in the nation’s second-worst hit Emilia-Romagna region.

While the disease plagues all of Italy, it remains mostly concentrated in the nation’s north, as 84 percent of coronavirus-related deaths have occurred in Italy’s northern Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna, and Piedmont regions, reports La Repubblica.

Squeri was not the only retired Italian doctor to succumb to the disease after being called on to return to the hospital to help combat the nation’s coronavirus epidemic.

Retired 73-year-old Italian doctor Gino Fasoli died from the Chinese virus last week, after returning to assist his former colleagues in trying to save the continuous arrival of coronavirus patients, according to Corriere della Sera.

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