Italy now has the highest death toll as army moves bodies
ITaLY became the new global epicentre for coronavirus deaths last night after its toll soared past China’s to 3,405.
Rome said fatalities surged by another 427. It has now suffered 160 more than China’s 3,245 since the virus broke out there at the end of last year.
It means that 902 Italians have died over the last two days. The country saw its worst day on Wednesday when 475 died.
Italy also experienced an astonishing surge in new infections yesterday, up by 5,322 to 41,035, suggesting potentially hundreds more deaths to come.
Last night Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte braced the country for an extension of its strict lockdown measures.
China remains the country which has seen the most overall infections – 80,928.
But more than 70,000 of these have since recovered and China’s daily death toll has dropped to single digits, meaning europe is the continent where the pandemic is spiralling most rapidly. Infections and
‘Crematoriums are overrun’
deaths were also up in Spain, Germany and France. Italy has averaged around 350 deaths daily since March 15.
Health experts say it has been hit particularly hard because of its large elderly population, who are much more vulnerable to the virus. It has the world’s second oldest population after Japan and 87 per cent of the dead so far have been aged over 70. One study suggests 99 per cent of victims had one or more underlying medical conditions, such as diabetes, cancer, hypertension or renal problems. Nearly half of them – 48.5 per cent – had three or more.
Mr Conte said he ‘hopes’ the crisis will reach its peak within ‘a few days’, but he added that lockdown measures preventing people leaving their homes for non-essential trips must be extended. as it stands, shops must stay shut until at least March 25 and schools until april 3 along with bars and restaurants.
Mr Conte did not say how long the measures would have to be prolonged. Funeral services in Italy’s worst-hit region have become so overwhelmed that the military have been called in to move bodies to lesser-hit areas.
Fifteen trucks and 50 soldiers were deployed to move bodies out of the northern town of Bergamo, in the worst-hit region of Lombardy. There were 300 deaths there alone on Wednesday and local authorities appealed for help after crematoriums became overrun.
Footage posted online showed a fleet of army trucks carrying the dead through the streets.
Meanwhile eU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier became one of the most high-profile europeans to test positive for the virus.