(Photo : Reuters)

Italy is the most affected country in the European region and has recorded nearly 28,000 positive cases of coronavirus with a death toll of 2,158.

Coronavirus pandemic greatly devastated Italy. The spiking number of coronavirus cases in the country compromised their healthcare service. How did this virus begin in Italy?

Codogno, Italy is a resident of around 16,000 people. The community now looks like a ghost town after they were advised to stay at home in an attempt to control the virus. This is the place where it was believed that COVID-19 in Italy originated.

In a recently published article, it was reported that on Feb.18 a 38-year-old athletic man had difficulty breathing. He went to his doctor's office and local hospital repeatedly but he was turned away and was not even tested for coronavirus. Unknowingly, the man is already carrying the virus which might have been infected dozens of people.

Dr. Lorezo Casani, a hospital administrator, said that the man went in and out of the emergency room for three or four times. This means that this patient has spread already the virus towards other patients and healthcare workers. 

This is how they speculated on how the virus began in Italy that quickly spread from a small town of Codogno to the big city of Milan.

Dr. Giacomo Graselli, head of COVID-19 task force in Milan, said that he now understands why China put up immediately a hospital in just a short period. 

He also said that he had a very bad experience in Italy because there are more than 50 patients every day who are coming to be checked and tested for the coronavirus. The most challenging part is he needs to find a place for each one of them.

Meanwhile, healthcare workers right now in all hospitals in northern Italy are very exhausted. They are also terrified of contracting the virus that they may pass it to their families as they go home. 

There are also limited ventilators in the hospital and these what make the sickest still alive. However, doctors need to decide later on as to who lives and who dies due to lack of ventilators. Most of the time its the elderly and those who have medical complications have to be sacrificed.

Dr. Casini explained that you will come to the point of choosing between a 72-year-old person and a 20-year-old person. For him, he would choose the younger one to live and let the old to die. This is the moment where a doctor needs to remove the ventilator from an old guy and give it to the young man. This is a horrible choice for the doctors, but this is necessary because they need to keep the younger generations alive.

Prof. Yascha Mounk from Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C. also said that some people are being left to die because it is not possible to treat everybody most especially if you only have limited medical supplies and healthcare workers. 

She also stressed this work is psychologically devastating for the doctors and nurses on the field. They are already terrified that they might be contacted with the virus and that they may pass it to their families and adding the stress of seeing the patients dying.

Moreover, there are many speculations about why Italy was hit so hard with the coronavirus pandemic. But the main reason that it spread quickly in the country because they do not have emergency plans for pandemics. What they only have is for natural disasters. This means that they are not prepared for this.

This is something that everyone should learn most especially those who have reported few numbers of COVID-19 cases. This is the type of virus that should not be underestimated.