While no detailed data is available, officials, nurses and relatives say there has been a spike in nursing home deaths in the worst affected regions of northern Italy since the virus emerged, and they are not showing up in coronavirus statistics.
“There are significant numbers of people who have died but whose death hasn’t been attributed to the coronavirus because they died at home or in a nursing home and so they weren’t swabbed,” said Giorgio Gori, mayor of the town of Bergamo.
Gori said there had been 164 deaths in his town in the first two weeks of March this year, of which 31 were attributed to the coronavirus. That compares with 56 deaths over the same period last year.
Even adding the 31 coronavirus deaths to that total would leave 77 additional deaths, an increase that suggests the virus may have caused significantly more deaths than officially recorded.
Emilio Tanzi, director of Cremona Solidale, a 460-bed residence in the northern town of Cremona, said nursing homes were on the front lines of a crisis that predominantly affected the elderly, who nevertheless have not had adequate support.
He said there had been a significant and “anomalous” increase in deaths since about March 2, when the spread of the epidemic began to gather pace in Italy.
But there was no way of knowing for sure whether they were due to COVID-19, the disease associated with the coronavirus, he added.
ja bym sie wstrzymał z tą przesadna pewnością siebie, by nie wyglądać jak polack co zawsze wszystko wie najlepiej przy flaszce na imieninach
Zakładki