Coronavirus: ‘In Italy, it’s apocalypse. You’d be fools to get burnt like us’

The intensive care chief of a hospital at the centre of Italy’s ‘red zone’ has a grim warning: clamp down before it’s too late

Roberta Bonometti and Peter Conradi

Saturday March 14 2020, 6.00pm GMT, The Sunday Times

Italians stuck at home because of the virus have been playing music and singing from their balconies
NAPOLIPRESS/PA/ALAMY/ALBERTO LINGRIA/REUTERS

Giuseppe Natalini, head of intensive care at the Fondazione Poliambulanza hospital in the northern Italian city of Brescia, one of the places hit hardest by the coronavirus, does not mince his words.

“The situation is catastrophic, unimaginable,” he said. “If someone had told me on February 21 [when the first cluster of cases was diagnosed in Italy] that today we would be in this situation, I would not have believed it.

“Two or three weeks ago I would have considered the strict measures that have been in place in Italy disproportionate and alarmist. Now, absolutely not.”

Italy had 17,660 coronavirus cases and 1,266 deaths by Friday. Natalini urged Britain and other European countries, feared to be two weeks or so behind Italy, to step up…