With this global pandemic completely overwhelming Italy’s healthcare system with sickness and death, the country doesn’t stop its mourning especially after an ICU nurse took her own life after contracting coronavirus, confirmed a nursing federation.
34-year-old Daniela Trezzi was overcome with stress from her frontline career in the novel virus’ epicenter. When she was positive for coronavirus on the 10th of March, she was ultimately worried about the possibility of already spreading the virus to her fellow colleagues in San Gerardo Hospital, Monza, located in the most hit province of Italy, Lombardy.
Last Tuesday, the National Federation of Nurses in Italy (Federazione Nazionale Ordini Professioni Infermieritich) made the official announcement that Trezzi committed suicide this past Sunday. Pulzo reported that Trezzi opened up to a colleague of hers, sharing that she was scared and concerned that she had already infected someone else with the virus, without her even knowing it.
The federation shared in the press statement that:
“We express our pain and consternation over the suicide of our young colleague. Our 450,000 professionals will join together around the relatives and family of Daniela.”
The director of San Gerardo Hospital, Mario Aparone also shared his regrets over one of his valued employee’s death, saying that proper authorities will be investigating the case.
Sadly, this isn’t the first case of a medical worker taking their own life in Italy. According to the National Federation of Nurses, they revealed that a similar incident occurred in Venice, just a couple of days before.
The federation said:
“We are at risk of suffering these stressful conditions and a shortage of medical personnel, but this cannot be commented on now.”
According to recent statistics, the country now has over 86,000 infected cases and 9,134 deaths – triple the amount of fatalities that China has registered since the global pandemic first emerged in December 2019.
Aside from these official numbers, the Italian Civil Protection Agency, who collects all data actually believes that the number of infected people could be as high as 700,000. Angelo Borrelli, the agency’s chief spoke to La Repubblica newspaper and said that, “A ratio of one certified case out of every 10 is credible.”
Reuters reported that Italy’s northern region, Lombardy has experienced the absolute worst of the pandemic, which their death toll rising from 296 in a day to at least 4,474 last week.
Throughout the crisis, medical frontlines have had to accept all the gut-wrenching responsibility of choosing which patients should live or die because of the lack of respirators and hospital beds in the ICU. In Italy alone, there are already at least 18 doctors that have passed away due to Covid-19.
Since this novel virus’ outbreak, other medical experts and aids have entered Italy from all over the world such as China, Russia, Cuba and the United States to provide help to the most affected Mediterranean nation.
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