Renewed calls for second lockdown in Italy as Covid cases soar past one million

Medical profession wants strict shutdown to help ease pressure on hospitals

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  A medical staffer wearing a protective suit waits at a triage check point at the Monza racetrack, in Monza, Italy. AP Photo

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  A resident of the Domenico Sartor nursing home in Castelfranco Veneto, near Venice, with her visiting daughter. AFP

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  Health workers wait with a patient in a queue of Ambulances outside the San Leonardo Hospital in Naples. EPA

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  The semi-deserted centre of Rome. EPA

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  Ambulances transport Covid-19 patients to the entrance to the emergency room of the San Gerardo hospital in Monza.

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  Preparations of the new Covid-19 hotspot test centre assembled by the Italian army in front of the Allianz stadium in Turin. EPA

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  An ambulance that transports Covid-19 patients to the Monza circuit is disinfected. EPA

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  People wearing protective face masks near the Colosseum in Rome. AFP

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  Paramedic Alessandra works at the Intensive Care Unit of the Varese’s Circolo Hospital, in Varese. AP Photo

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  Doctors carry a coronavirus patient in the Intensive Care Unit at Varese’s Circolo hospital. AP Photo

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Italy passed the one million mark, sparking renewed calls for another national lockdown.

Italian hospitals are struggling to cope with the second wave sweeping across Europe, with medical facilities in the south not as well equipped to fight the virus as are those in the more affluent north.

The most recent figures from the Italian Health Ministry show 42,953 people in Italy have died from the virus since the start of the pandemic, the highest death toll on the continent.

Giovanni Leoni, vice president of an Italian doctors’ federation, believes a strict lockdown is the only way to combat the climbing death toll.

"The number of positive cases is doubling every 10 days," he told The National.

“The number of ICU beds occupied by coronavirus patients is 47 per cent, which is past the threshold of 40 per cent.

“The numbers that we are seeing are also reflective of 10 days ago, due to how the virus presents itself in patients. Therefore, we need a radical change to stop the spread.”

He said that patients during this second wave tended to be younger than those in March and April when Italy was the first country in Europe to be hit by coronavirus.

Dr Leoni’s concerns were echoed by others in his profession. This week the country’s national association of doctors and nurses said in an open letter: “The hospitals are close to collapse because of the shortage of personnel and the lack of beds in the face of an abnormal flow of patients because of the rapid and vertiginous spread of Covid infection.”

A hospital in Naples became so overwhelmed with people suffering from coronavirus on Tuesday that patients had to be given oxygen through their car windows.

Italy has a three-tier system of yellow, orange and red local restrictions – which correlate to the coronavirus transmission rate and hospital capacity – but these have been subject to intense political debate across the county.

Last week, Prime Minster Giuseppe Conte announced a nationwide curfew from 10pm to 5am until December 3 and ordered capacity on public transport be cut to 50 per cent.

In an interview with Italy's La Stampa newspaper on Wednesday, the premier said he would try to avoid a total lockdown.