TheEconomistMarch 21st 2020 451G
iulio gallera, a Milanese corporate
lawyer from Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza
Italia party, is health minister in the re-
gional government of Lombardy. “We are
working hour by hour,” he said on March
17th. “Yesterday, we were almost [down] to
zero beds in intensive care.” What were
lacking were ventilators to go with the oth-
er equipment. But then the Red Cross of-
fered 30. “When, at 10pm, the news came
through of those 30 ventilators, I almost
wept,” said Mr Gallera.
Nowhere is Italy’s race against time
more dramatically evident than in Lombar-
dy, the region around Milan and the one
worst hit by the spread of covid-19. In the
city of Bergamo, the virus has over-
whelmed the local health system. Doctors
have been taking life-and-death decisions
since last month, deciding which patients
should be put on the available ventilators.
It is hoped that a vast makeshift intensive-
care unit being assembled at the Milan ex-
hibition centre will supply the capacity
Lombardy needs to cope with relentlessly
growing demand. Mr Berlusconi has perso-
nally donated €10m ($11m) to the project.
By March 18th the number of people inLombardy who have tested positive had
grown to 17,713, almost half the national to-
tal. Of these, 1,959 had died and 924 were in
intensive care.
The next few days will be crucial in
showing whether draconian containment
measures ordered by the central govern-ment (see Briefing) will begin to slow the
spread of the virus in northern Italy and
mitigate its effects on the rest of the coun-
try, where it could speedily overwhelm
health services far weaker than that of
prosperous Lombardy. It is grimly predict-
able that Italy’s death toll of 2,978 when The
Economistwent to press will soon pass Chi-
na’s to become the highest in the world.
In Lombardy, the number of new daily
cases is still growing, but as a share of the
total existing cases the number is starting
to fall. By March 18th it was down to 9.2%.
Three days earlier, the governor, Attilio
Fontana, noted the change. “Let’s hope it is
the start of a trend reversal,” he said. But he
added: “I am saying it in a whisper.”Italy and covid-19The race against time
ROME
Italy is set to become the worst-affected country, for now1,0004,000100Going south
Italy, covid-19 cases, 2020Source:Departmentf Civil ProtectionRomeMilan BergamoFebruary 25th March 6th March 18thEurope
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