Many failures combined to unleash death on Italy's Lombardy
Source: Associated Press
Many failures combined to unleash death on Italy’s Lombardy
By NICOLE WINFIELD
April 26, 2020
ROME (AP) — As Italy prepares to emerge from the West’s first and most extensive coronavirus lockdown, it is increasingly clear that something went terribly wrong in Lombardy, the hardest-hit region in Europe’s hardest-hit country.
Italy had the bad luck of being the first Western nation to be slammed by the outbreak, and its official total of 26,600 fatalities lags behind only the U.S. in the global death toll. Italy’s first homegrown case was recorded Feb. 21, at a time when the World Health Organization was still insisting the virus was “containable” and not nearly as infectious as the flu.
But there is also evidence that demographics and health care deficiencies collided with political and business interests to expose the 10 million people in the northern Italian region of Lombardy to COVID-19 in ways unseen anywhere else, particularly the most vulnerable in nursing homes.
Virologists and epidemiologists say what went wrong there will be studied for years, given how the outbreak overwhelmed a medical system long considered one of Europe’s best, while in the neighboring Veneto region, the impact was significantly more controlled.
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Here’s a look at the perfect storm of what went wrong in Lombardy, based on interviews and briefings with doctors, union representatives, mayors and virologists, as well as reports from Italy’s Superior Institute of Health, national statistics agency ISTAT and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which advises developed economies on policy.
CAUGHT UNPREPARED
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Read more: https://apnews.com/de2794327607a3a67ed551f0b6b71404