San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
POPE, OTHERS HAIL HEALTH WORKERS ON ITALY’S COVID ANNIVERSARY
U.K. announces new visitation rules for nursing homes
Pope Francis and Italy’s president on Saturday marked a newly established annual day to honor doctors, nurses and other health care workers, exactly one year after the nation’s first known native case of COVID-19 emerged.
In a message to honor those caring for COVID-19 patients, Frances hailed the “generous involvement, at times heroic, of the profession lived as mission.”
On the evening of Feb. 20, 2020, a hospital in Codogno, northern Italy confirmed that a 38-year-old Italian man was infected with the coronavirus. The man had no links to anyone who had been in China, where the
COVID-19 outbreak first erupted.
A year on, Italy has so far seen more than 95,000 known dead, the secondhigh coronavirus toll in Europe after Britain.
Expressing gratitude to doctors, nurses and other health care workers, Francis likened their dedication to “a vaccine against individualism and selfishness.” He said that such dedication “demonstrates the most authentic desire that dwells in the heart of man — be near to those who have the most need and give of oneself for them.”
President Sergio Mattarella marked the first National Day of Health Care Personnel by mourning the many medical workers who contracted the coronavirus and died.
According to professional associations in the sector, at least 326 doctors and 81 nurses have died of COVID-19.
Mattarella said the professionalism and self-denial shown by the medical workers contributed to efforts “to avoid the epidemic’s precipitating into an irreversible catastrophe.”
The Italian leader said despite its many shortcomings, the national health care system has proven to be an institution “to preserve and to invest in, in order to protect” Italians collectively.
Some of the 209 billion euros ($250 billion) in European Union funding to help Italy rebuild from the economic and other devastation of the pandemic will be earmarked to shore up and improve Italy’s public health care system.
More COVID-19 anniversary commemorations are scheduled for today in Italy, especially in the hard-hit north, where the outbreak first pummeled the nation.
Meanwhile, the British government announced a small step out of the nation’s lockdown on Saturday — allowing nursing home residents to have a single friend or family member visit them indoors.
Residents and their visitors will be able to hold hands, but not hug.
The change takes effect March 8. For months, nursing home residents have only been able to see loved ones outdoors or through screens.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson says he will announce a “road map” out of lockdown on Monday. The government has stressed that easing restrictions will be slow and cautious. Store reopenings and outdoor socializing are unlikely before April, though children will go back to school from March 8.
Johnson’s Conservative government has been accused of reopening the country too quickly after the first lockdown in the spring. Britain has had around 120,000 coronavirus deaths, the highest toll in Europe.
The number of new confirmed cases, hospitalization and deaths are all declining, but remain high, and Johnson said this past week his reopening road map would follow “data, not dates.”
The U.K. government is also racing to vaccinate the population as quickly as possible against the virus. So far almost 17 million people, a quarter of the population, have received the first of two doses of a vaccine.
The new nursing home measures apply in England. In other parts of the U.K. visiting rules vary, with Scottish residents able to have two visitors from March 8.