Medical personnel wearing protective face masks help patients in Italy (Picture: Reuters)

The coronavirus crisis in Italy has reached such epic proportions that hospitals have been turned into conveyor belts where patients are viewed as numbers and the dead not given funerals, according to medics.

Deaths from Covid-19 in the southern European country today outstripped China, the source of the outbreak, leaving hospitals struggling to deal with the enormous growth in cases.

Connor McAinsh is a British nurse working at the Gavazeni Hospital in Bergamo, near Milan – the area hit hardest by the new virus.

He said the intensive care unit is now the scene of ‘an endless stream of people’ being treated for coronavirus.




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A patient in a biocontainment unit is carried on a stretcher from an ambulance arrived at hospital in Rome (Picture: AP)

Speaking after finishing a gruelling night shift, Mr McAinsh told ITV News: ‘I think the whole dynamic has changed because we went from taking care of individual patients with their own problems, to having an endless amount of people with the same problem and not enough time or material to deal with everybody.

‘And the rate of deaths going up so high, as soon as there was a death or that we could transfer a patient from our hospital to one of the first hospitals that was taking people with infectious diseases because they had wards for that, immediately we would take in new patients.

‘It’s just an endless stream of people coming in and as soon as we have a bed, we have a new patient coming in who needs critical care.

‘So it’s much less personal, there’s less of a one to one relationship with our patients now, they’ve just become, you know, numbers.’

The hospital now exclusively treats coronavirus patients.

Protective masks, glasses and suits are used to treat a patient suffering from coronavirus disease (Picture: Reuters)

Everyone else has either been moved elsewhere or simply discharged to free as many beds as possible.

Reports describe Italy’s hospital corridors overflowing with Covid-19 patients and staff working 14-hour shifts to get a grip on the crisis.

The cemeteries are unable to cope.

‘They’ve had to build a tent outside the hospital and yeah, there are burials about every 30 minutes in the cemetery of Bergamo,’ he said.

‘And there are no relatives, like it’s complete isolation.

There is a feeling of helplessness as more and more coronavirus patients arrive every day (Picture: Reuters)

‘So, for most of the patients that arrive, most of them see their families once when the ambulance goes to pick them up and there’s no contact, even until the moment of their death and their funeral.

‘It just adds to a sense of helplessness in the whole situation, and with so many patients coming in, when someone dies it’s almost as if we say okay we couldn’t do anything for this person, now we can take another person and see if their condition will improve.’

The situation in Italy developed rapidly leaving hospital staff without the protective equipment needed to deal with patients. He issued a stark warning to his British compatriots not to underestimate the coronavirus threat.



He said: ‘I don’t think we were ready. We had never dealt with this kind of patient.

‘And the change happened so quickly from having one patient with coronavirus, to having a whole intensive care ward dedicated to coronavirus patients, to have operating theatres shut down and beds put in the operating theatres for more incubated patients.

Operating theatres have shutdown and are now used as bed space for people with Covid-19

‘It happened so quickly and I don’t think anybody expected that.”

The full interview with John Ray, will be shown today on the ITV News at 10pm.

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