Italy is second country to pass Chinese virus case total
ROME — Doctors and nurses in Italy’s overwhelmed northern hospitals have welcomed a slight stabilizing in the number of coronavirus infections but fear the virus is still silently spreading in the country’s south 2½ weeks into the West’s most extreme nationwide shutdown.
As the dead in Italy keep piling up, virologists warn that the actual number of cases could be more than five times as high as the official count, which reached just shy of 86,500 on Friday. That means infections will still climb even with Italians ordered to stay home for all but essential activity.
Italy, one of the hot spots in the global pandemic, has by far the most virus deaths of any nation in the world, a grim tally that reached 9,134 as of Friday. Italy also surpassed China in its number of confirmed cases and has more than any nation besides the United States, which outpaced China in total cases on Thursday.
“It is something devastating,” said the Rev. Mario Carminati, who has turned over a church in the tiny Lombard town of Seriate to host coffins before they are taken by military convoy to be cremated.
Despite the toll, officials have also expressed cautious optimism that the exponential spread of the virus is starting to slow in the hard-hit north, thanks to two weeks of military-enforced stay-at-home orders. For several days this week, new infections and deaths showed signs of slowing down, and emergency rooms weren’t seeing the tsunami of sick that characterized the first weeks of the pandemic following Italy’s first positive test Feb. 20.
“The numbers are still high, but for a few days now the numbers have stopped rising, thank God,” said Dr. Luca Lorini, head of intensive care at the Pope John XXIII hospital in Bergamo, one of the hardest hit of Italy’s public hospitals.
He marvels that he is still standing...