Italian doctor’s stark coronavirus warning as he’s forced to choose who lives

An Italian doctor at the centre of the coronavirus crisis has told of how he has to make life and death decisions on a daily basis. 

Dr Michele Boldrini, 33, says he has never faced such tough decisions so frequently – and that future deaths in the overwhelmed Mediterranean country could now occur because of a lack of beds and oxygen. 

Speaking exclusively to Metro.co.uk from Milan, Dr Boldrini, a Consultant in Urgency and Emergency at the Emergency Department in San Carlo Borromeo Hospital, said Italians are now ‘dying alone’ – and that he has to ‘let people go’ each day.

He explained: ‘I still spend my days deciding who is eligible for intensive care, who to let go, and who to treat with intermediate devices. I diagnose everyday bilateral interstitial pneumonias that I used see 4 times in a year.’

Dr Boldrini, who has worked in hospitals since 2012, added: ‘If the epidemic skyrockets, the number of oxygen devices and beds is finite: most future deaths will happen because there won’t be enough for everybody.’

Italy has now recorded by far the most deaths of any country worldwide – yesterday reaching a total of 6,078 – and is catching up with China on the total number of positive cases.

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The health service has been overwhelmed by the situation – with cases yesterday reaching 63,928, while the comparatively old age of the country’s population has worsened the crisis.

A delayed lockdown of the outbreak’s epicentre, in Lombardy where Dr Boldrini is, also contributed to the rapid spread, which has seen Italy become the focus of the global pandemic.

But there are signs that the country is beginning to turn a corner – with deaths yesterday showing the smallest rise in numerical terms since Thursday, suggesting a clear downward trend.

Originally from Ventimiglia, Liguria, Dr Boldrini continued: ‘A big part are older folks with chronic conditions like diabetes or heart disease. 

‘They can go bad very fast, and we have to decide daily whether or not invest resources in some of them based on prognosis and overall starting conditions. 

‘This means letting people go, which is part of our job, but it has never been so frequent or conditioned by the scarcity of devices/beds. 

‘Our people die alone, because of isolations protocols, they can see their relatives at home only via electronic devices.’ 

On Saturday, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said Italy was living through its ‘gravest crisis since World War II’. 

He pledged to tighten the nationwide lockdown imposed to fight the rampaging spread of Covid-19 by shutting down all production facilities except those that are ‘necessary, crucial, indispensable to guarantee essential goods’.

Warning that the prevalence of the disease in other countries is ‘grossly underestimated’, Dr Boldrini added: ‘There is a very high mortality rate if compared to previous similar flu syndromes with respiratory complications. 

‘Here in Lombardy the death toll is very high because there is a mass of infected subjects that built (while) isolation protocols were put in to action. This is because Covid-19 spreads faster than seasonal flu-viruses.’ 

But he urged health workers and governments to ‘focus on the staggering amount of acute respiratory patients with ARDS (acute respiratory distress syndrome) and added that lockdown protocols ‘really helped’.

Yesterday the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, brought in a series of unprecedented measures as he brought in a lockdown to deal with the ‘national emergency’ – amid fears that the country could be just weeks behind Italy. 

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