Coronavirus: Newspaper's obituary section spans 10 pages as Italian town sees 146 deaths in just a week
A disturbing video reveals how an Italian newspaper went from having one and a half pages of obituaries to a staggering ten pages in just a month's time.
While there were only a few obituaries to print on February 9, dozens had to be accommodated in Bergamo’s daily newspaper, in the Lombardy region, by March 13.
In a bid to show the contrast, Silvia Merler shared a video of both editions of L’Eco di Bergamo side by side. More than 1,800 people in the country had died after contracting the Novel coronavirus by Sunday morning.
"This is the daily newspaper of Bergamo, one of the epidemic hotspots in Italy," Merler tweeted. "On February 9th, obituaries occupied 1.5 pages. On March 13th, the paper printed 10 (!!) pages of obituaries. Please, #StayAtHome and show this to anyone who tells you #COVID19 'is just like the flu'," he added.
The transport ministry of Italy -- which has been on lockdown for almost a week -- banned passengers from taking ferries to the island of Sardinia and also stopped overnight train trips taken by many in the country's north to reach their homes and families in the south.
Meanwhile, hospitals are struggling to accommodate the sick. Dr. Roberto Rona, in charge of intensive care at the Monza hospital, described the situation saying, "It’s not a wave. It’s a tsunami."
In the last 24 hours, at least 368 people have died due to coronavirus -- an increase of 25%. The total death toll now stands at a whopping 1,809.
Recently, an Italian journalist urged the US and the UK to take the decisive step of locking down their countries amid the COVID-19 pandemic to control the burgeoning crisis.
The plea came as the number of positive cases in Italy rose to 24,747 from 21,157 a day earlier as Europe’s worst outbreak of the deadly virus continued to expand.
Mattia Ferraresi, who writes for the Italian newspaper Il Foglio, said that his country's government had wasted time by not putting the country under lockdown much earlier.
Writing for the Boston Globe, Ferraresi detailed how the outbreak has broken down the healthcare system in Italy with doctors having to make decisions as if they were in a war, the journalist said,
"So here’s my warning for the United States: It didn’t have to come to this," the journalist said. "We, of course, couldn’t stop the emergence of a previously unknown and deadly virus. But we could have mitigated the situation we are now in, in which people who could have been saved are dying. I, and too many others, could have taken a simple yet morally loaded action: We could have stayed home," he added.