Why Surgeons Don't Want to Operate Right Now
A rising death toll among doctors in Italy provides a warning about the dangers of poor protection and testing.
Getting into gear.
Source: picture alliance
Last week, the Italian government began publishing a new dataset related to the coronavirus pandemic. It features a list of names, starting with 68-year-old Roberto Stella, president of the Medical Association of Varese, in Lombardy. Stella’s name tops a roll call of doctors who’ve died from Covid-19 since March 11 alone. It had grown to 24 when I checked while writing this column — more than double the reported rate of medical deaths in China.
The numbers confirmed what many doctors in the U.K. have suspected for some weeks: Those on the front lines are most at risk, not simply of catching the virus, but of getting its most severe form. So far, however, the very countries that have been slow to enact measures to suppress transmission in the community also lag behind in understanding and responding to the threat Covid-19 poses to doctors.