As of this writing, the national total of confirmed coronavirus cases in Italy has reached 17,660 infections and seen 1,266 deaths, the BBC reports.
Last Monday, the entire country was put into national lockdown - a measure that still remains in place.
Now, an Italian doctor treating those infected with COVID-19 has taken to Facebook to speak out about his experiences working to fight the virus - describing it as a "tsunami that has swept us all".
Related - Man reveals what it is like to have the coronavirus:Per the New York Post, Dr. Daniele Macchini of the Humanitas Gavazzeni hospital (located in the northern city of Bergamo), shared a lengthy post on Facebook warning others about the true dangers of negligence and laxity in the ongoing battle against coronavirus.
In the lengthy post - translated by Dr. Silvia Stringhini, an epidemiologist and researcher at the Geneva University’s Institute of Global Health - Dr. Macchini writes:
"After much thought about whether and what to write about what is happening to us, I felt that silence was not responsible.
"I will, therefore, try to convey to people far from our reality what we are living in Bergamo in these days of Covid-19 pandemic. I understand the need not to create panic, but when the message of the dangerousness of what is happening does not reach people I shudder."
Bergamo - a city of about 122,000 some 30 miles northeast of Milan - is currently one of the nation's worth-hit areas, with 1,245 confirmed cases of the SARS-like virus (as of this writing).
Dr. Macchini continued:
"I myself watched with some amazement the reorganization of the entire hospital in the past week, when our current enemy was still in the shadows: the wards slowly ’emptied,’ elective activities were interrupted.
"All this rapid transformation brought an atmosphere of silence and surreal emptiness to the corridors of the hospital that we did not yet understand, waiting for a war that was yet to begin and that many (including me) were not so sure would ever come with such ferocity.
"I still remember my night call a week ago when I was waiting for the results of a swab. When I think about it, my anxiety over one possible case seems almost ridiculous and unjustified, now that I’ve seen what’s happening. Well, the situation now is dramatic to say the least.
"The war has literally exploded and battles are uninterrupted day and night. But now that need for beds has arrived in all its drama. One after the other the departments that had been emptied fill up at an impressive pace.
"The boards with the names of the patients, of different colors depending on the operating unit, are now all red and instead of surgery you see the diagnosis, which is always the damned same: bilateral interstitial pneumonia."
In the viral post - which has since been shared more than 35,000 times on the social media platform - the doctor also urged people not to compare COVID-19 to a bad case of the flu:
"Now, explain to me which flu virus causes such a rapid drama. […] And while there are still people who boast of not being afraid by ignoring directions, protesting because their normal routine is ‘temporarily’ put in crisis, the epidemiological disaster is taking place.
"And there are no more surgeons, urologists, orthopedists, we are only doctors who suddenly become part of a single team to face this tsunami that has overwhelmed us.
"Cases are multiplying, we arrive at a rate of 15-20 admissions per day all for the same reason. The results of the swabs now come one after the other: positive, positive, positive. Suddenly the E.R. is collapsing."
In the Facebook post, Macchini would go on to describe each ventilator as "gold", and then once again stressed the emotional and physical strain those working in the medical industry are currently facing:
"I saw the tiredness on faces that didn’t know what it was despite the already exhausting workloads they had. I saw a solidarity of all of us who never failed to go to our internist colleagues to ask, ‘What can I do for you now?’
"Doctors who move beds and transfer patients, who administer therapies instead of nurses. Nurses with tears in their eyes because we can’t save everyone, and the vital parameters of several patients at the same time reveal an already marked destiny.
"There are no more shifts, no more hours. Social life is suspended for us. We no longer see our families for fear of infecting them. Some of us have already become infected despite the protocols.
Macchini finished the startling post by revealing that some of his colleagues have now become infected themselves and then infected their relatives who "are already struggling between life and death". He typed:
“So be patient, you can’t go to the theater, museums or the gym. Try to have pity on the myriad of old people you could exterminate.
"I finish by saying that I really don’t understand this war on panic. The only reason I see is mask shortages, but there’s no mask on sale anymore. We don’t have a lot of studies, but is panic really worse than neglect and carelessness during an epidemic of this sort?"