The Italian government has begun hiring nearly half a thousand doctors in Naples and the region where hospital care is most difficult to operate. In Rome, the test stations were rushed on Sunday.

In the province of Campania, a tender for the hiring of four hundred and fifty doctors has been announced, after it was revealed that there is a shortage not only of hospital beds, ambulances, oxygen cylinders but also of doctors in the region, which has been listed as extremely epidemic since Sunday.

The Italian Health Ministry said Sunday afternoon that 33,000,979 new patients had been identified in the last 24 hours, up from 37,000,255 the day before, but the number of tests was also lower, at 30,000. The death toll was 546 after 544 the day before, bringing the death toll from the epidemic to 45,000.

Meanwhile, the man who videotaped a patient and died in one of the bathrooms at the Cardarelli Hospital in Naples was identified. The recording was not made by a hospital worker but by another patient. The hospital denounced the author of the video and the prosecution has launched an investigation to clarify the circumstances of the death.

Giuseppe Longo, executive director of the hospital, said the burden on the institution was partly due to the population bursting into emergency departments with “any mild symptoms” for fear of the epidemic. The employment of almost sixty thousand foreign doctors and nurses living in Italy has also been raised, but this is not supported by the medical chamber.

The government has announced that so-called Covid hotels should be set up in each county to serve patients who are positive but do not require hospital treatment. It is estimated that twenty thousand places are needed compared to just over a thousand currently available. The Federal Hotel Association of Federalbergh recalled that ninety percent of the 27,000 hotels in the country are currently closed, so the industry is willing to cooperate. In the Italian province of Lazio, the accommodation of quarantined patients in hotels costs 45 euros a day and in the north of Bergamo 80 euros a day.

In Rome, the long lines snaked in front of the test stations also on Sunday: a quick sample is taken at the entrance of St. John’s Hospital in the civil defense tent, and the car test stations along the roads exiting the city don’t even need to get out of the vehicles. Those who test positive on the rapid test should undergo an additional PCR test. Those waiting to be tested told the MTI that they are testing themselves for work or travel. Others simply want to know if they have contracted the virus or not. Trial time is booked online, waiting time is a few weeks.

Rapid antigen tests are gradually spreading throughout Italy: in Palermo, Sicily, 27,000 tests were carried out on Saturday alone, and a public detection station was installed in part of the soccer team’s Juventus Stadium. In the town of Robbio, Lombardy, with a population of 6,000, the mayor’s office bought test kits that residents use alone: ​​17.5 percent of the 300 tests so far have tested positive.

The Milan Cancer Research Center has announced that its research shows that the Sars-CoV-2 virus was already asymptomatic in Italy last September. However, the first official patient was identified on February 20 at the Codogno Hospital in Lombardy.

As of Sunday, eight areas were counted as red, nine more as moderately dangerous or orange, and five as yellow, meaning that the spread of the epidemic there has not reached a critical level.

In the red and orange zones, 270,000 restaurants lowered their blinds. The loss of income is estimated at 5.4 billion euros.



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