As per the World Health Organisation's most recent situation report, there have been a total of 142,539 confirmed cases of COVID-19 globally, and 5,393 deaths. These numbers continue to grow by the hour.
Now, a video shared to Twitter has served as yet another chilling reminder regarding the true impact of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
The footage - which the Daily Mail reports was filmed in Bergamo, Lombardy, Italy - shows a man speaking in Italian as she shows the obituary page of his local newspaper, L'Eco di Bergamo, from February 9.
On that date, L'Eco di Bergamo's obituary page reported just a page and a half of death notices. At the time, Italy had recorded just three confirmed cases of COVID-19.
The man then reveals an edition of L'Eco di Bergamo newspaper published on March 13. As he slowly turns the pages, he reveals the true devastation of the disease, as the obituaries now consist of 10 full pages.
You can see the video in the tweet below:The video was later shared to Twitter by Rai News 24 journalist Enrica Toninelli.
Translated from Italian to English, Toninelli captions the video: "Impressive! The obituaries on the Eco of Bergamo, compared with those of a month ago, give the idea of the impact in human lives of the #coronavirus".
As of March 13, the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country of Italy had skyrocketed to 17,600, including 1,266 deaths, the Mail reports.
Per The Sun, the latest figures show more than 1,000 people have died from the coronavirus in Italy, with more than 21,000 confirmed cases. The publication also reports that Lombardy is the worst affected region.
A heartwarming video shared to social media earlier this week showing quarantined Italian residents singing from their homes:Last week, an Italian doctor treating those infected with COVID-19 took to Facebook to speak out about his experiences working to fight the disease - describing it as a "tsunami that has swept us all".
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."