Italy is repeating the mistake of Wuhan
According to Bloomberg , a team of Chinese experts has traveled to Italy to advise officials in the campaign against the Covid-19 pandemic. They have pointed out the mistake in the current Italian response.
Liang Zong’An, head of the respiratory department of Sichuan University Hospital (China), said that doctors at the Wuhan epidemic center had made the same mistake at the beginning of the outbreak. Specifically, at that time, only the seriously ill patients were admitted to the hospital, while doctors advised patients with mild symptoms to self-quarantine at home to reduce the pressure on the Wuhan medical system being overwhelmed. download.
However, they later realized that people with mild symptoms of self-isolation were at risk of spreading the virus to family members, even to others when some people were still free to move around. . Corriere della Sera daily said on Tuesday that Italian police had sanctioned a series of people who violated a nationwide blockade, of which about 50 people were confirmed to have Covid-19 but were still free to move instead. self isolation.
Wuhan started quarantining all cases with mild symptoms at field hospitals converted from offices, stadiums, gyms in early February, a move that was supposed to help reduce including the spread of Covid-19. By now, Wuhan has basically controlled Covid-19. According to official published data, Wuhan only recorded a few new cases while the epidemic was "speeding up" in many parts of the world.
Dr. Liang said that his team of experts advised Italian officials to apply mandatory isolation policies to patients even with mild symptoms of Covid-19.
In China, a study from one province showed that 80% of group infections were caused by people who were advised to isolate themselves at home, said Xiao Niang, a researcher at the China Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. said.
According to Liang, Italian families often live in larger spaces than in Wuhan. However, there is growing evidence that the whole family is still infected despite trying to isolate an infected person in a separate room.
"We cannot say whether Italy’s home isolation policy is right or wrong because each country has its own coping mechanism, but we have noticed some problems," Xiao said.
Liang said that the Italian experts they met could not say how many clusters of infections resulted from the home isolation policy.
Milan has started turning some hotels into focused isolation places for patients with mild symptoms. The first hotel with 306 rooms will start accepting isolation patients this week.
Italia has reached the peak of the epidemic
Tightening the national blockade order could help Italy slow down the spread of Covid-19. (Photo: EPA)
As of March 30, Italy recorded 101,739 cases, including 11,591 deaths, becoming the country with the most Covid-19 deaths in the world, and the second-highest number of cases after the United States. . Italian officials said the actual number of people infected could be 10 times higher because of limited testing. Meanwhile, the death rate in Italy is high due to the aging population and many people do not even treat even when they are found to be infected.
Xiao said the hospitals in Italy are taking good care of the patients, but the problem is the lack of medical equipment. He also said that Italy’s military mobilization from March 22 to tighten enforcement of the blockade seems to have created a "turning point". According to this expert, Italy may have reached the peak of the epidemic after applying strict blockade orders that restricted people from traveling. “If these measures continue, the number of new infections will decrease significantly. People should be far apart. That means there is no concentration. "
Western countries from the US to Spain are facing the same problems as the previous Wuhan, including the lack of test kits, serious shortage of medical equipment, and overcrowded hospitals.
Doctors were also infected in Italy and so far at least 61 doctors have died from Covid-19. In Spain, doctors have to make difficult choices to see who has the opportunity to live due to the lack of assistive devices such as ventilators.
The Covid-19 outbreak started in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China late last year, and has now spread to more than 200 countries and territories around the world. Covid-19 caused more than 771,000 people to be infected, about 37,000 to die. A number of countries have imposed orders to block some or all of the country to prevent the spread of the disease.
