Dimension of virus ‘massacre’ in Italy nursing homes grows

ROCCA DI PAPA, Italy — The World Health Organization has called it a “massacre.” The Health Ministry sent in inspectors. Prosecutors are investigating, and an appalled mayor said the managers of a residential facility she ordered sealed had “jeopardized the life and health of the most fragile.”

A scandal over coronavirus infections and deaths in Italy’s nursing homes took on broader dimensions Friday, with the National Institutes of Health conservatively estimating that at least 6,773 residents had died since Feb. 1, 40% of them either infected with the virus or with COVID-19 symptoms.

The true number is higher, since the agency surveyed a fraction of Italy's eldercare homes and few residents of nursing homes nationwide were ever tested. But the institute's survey gave a sample of the toll since Feb. 1: In hard-hit Bergamo province, 534 residents died. The province of Milan reported 749 deaths in nursing homes.

Some 36% of the thousands of deaths cited by the National Institutes of Health occurred in the second half of March, the period when infections were at their height in Italy and the country had the most virus-related deaths in the world.

The latest nursing home to be placed under police-enforced quarantine was in the tiny town of Rocca di Papa, in the hills south of Rome. Five people have died at the San Raffaele home and 148 tested positive for the virus, compared to 11 confirmed infections in the rest of the town.

“Inside it’s a ghost town,” recounted funeral home worker Luciano Bambino as he retrieved a body from the San Raffaele mortuary Friday. “The corridors, the gardens. It was deserted, spectral. They were all closed in, closed off from every point of view.”