BERGAMO, Italy (AP) – A year ago, Bergamo’s state-of-the-art Pope John XXIII hospital was on the verge of collapse as doctors struggled to treat 600 patients, 100 of them in intensive care. Army trucks brought the dead from the city’s overloaded crematorium in images now burned into collective pandemic memory.
The picture has now improved a lot: the hospital treats less than 200 virus patients, of whom only a quarter require intensive care.
But still unchanged as Italy’s death rate rises again is that the victims are predominantly elderly, with vaccination barriers stumbling in the country and elsewhere in Europe.
“No, this thing, unfortunately, I was not able to protect the elderly, to make it clear how important it would be to protect the elderly,” said Dr. Luca Lorini, head of the intensive care unit of the hospital named after the mid-20th century. century Pope born in Bergamo. “If I have 10 older people over 80 and they get COVID, in their age group, 8 out of 10 die.”
That was true in the first horrific wave and remained “absolutely the same” in subsequent peaks, he said.
Pledges to vaccinate all Italians over 80 years old by the end of March have remained woefully short, amid well-documented interruptions in the vaccine supply and organizational shortcomings. Only a third of the 7.3 million doses that Italy has administered to date have gone to people in that age group, with more than half of those with World War II memories still waiting for their first shot.
“We should have been through with this,” Lorini told The Associated Press.
Italy’s new prime minister, Mario Draghi, promised on a visit to Bergamo on Thursday that the vaccination campaign would be accelerated. His comments came when he dedicated a park to honor the country’s more than 104,000 deaths as a result of the pandemic. At the beginning of March, two-thirds of virus-related deaths in Italy were in the over 80s; the average age of pandemic deaths in Italy is currently hovering above 80, after peaking at 85 last summer.
“We are here to promise our elders that it will never happen again that vulnerable people are not adequately helped and protected. Only in this way will we respect those who have left us, ”said Draghi on the anniversary of the first army convoy that killed the virus from Bergamo.
Italy can hope to see its future by looking to Britain, the first country in Europe to allow widespread vaccinations. Since the beginning of December, more than 38% of the UK population has been vaccinated, starting with the over-70s, health workers and nursing home staff.
In Britain, which leads Europe in terms of virus deaths, the percentage of fatalities among the over-75s has decreased from 75% of the pre-vaccination total to 64% in the week ending March 5. The number of deaths across Britain has dropped from an average of 128 a day in the most recent seven-day period, from a peak of 1,248 in the week ending January 20 – also thanks to lockdown measures.
Spain, France and Italy, along with health workers, prioritized vaccinating nursing home residents, by far the hardest hit in the spring wave. They account for nearly a third of the deaths in Italy’s first wave, and a third of the death toll of nearly 91,100 pandemics in France.
In France, COVID-19 infections and deaths in nursing homes show a steady downward trend as the number of people vaccinated has increased, with 85% receiving at least one injection. Early signs are that the proportion of ICU patients aged 75 and older has also started to decline since February, with nearly half in this age group being at least partially vaccinated. The improved picture for nursing home residents comes despite a renewed worsening outbreak in France.
In Spain, the number of infections and deaths in nursing homes has fallen dramatically after the first phase of the vaccination program, with a significant decrease in the number of deaths.
In Italy, where vaccinations for nursing home residents started in January, compared to mid-February for other elderly people, lower infection rates in nursing homes have been called “an early success”.
“We cannot consider it a victory, by no means, of the vaccine strategy,” admitted Dr Giovanni Rezza, director of infectious diseases at the Ministry of Health, recently.
On Friday, Draghi said Italy was aiming to deliver 500,000 shots a day by next month, from a current daily level of about 165,000.
With the infection rate on the rise in Italy for the seventh straight week, driven by the fast-moving British variant, more than 2.5 million Italians over the age of 80 are waiting for their shots. What’s worse, many still have no indication of when they might get them.
Luca Fusco founded a group to commemorate the dead and advocate for justice in their memory after his father died of COVID-19 on March 11, 2020.
His mother, who celebrated her 83rd birthday on the day of her husband’s death, has still not gotten an appointment to get vaccinated more than a month after filing a request. Fusco said this was true for most of the hundreds of elderly people in their small town near Bergamo, adding that they had to travel 30 miles (20 kilometers) to get every shot, a burden for many.
Italy’s goal is to vaccinate 80% of the population by September, and Draghi has appointed an army general to relaunch the campaign. Fusco said his group, “Noi Denunceremo” (“We Will Denounce”) will act as a watchdog on the matter.
Draghi said we will all be vaccinated by September. Perfect, ”said Fusco. “We have taken note of it. If this is not true, we will speak up and ask Draghi for an explanation. “
Associated Press writers Danica Kirka in London, John Leicester and Sylvie Corbet in Paris, Joseph Wilson in Barcelona, Frank Jordans in Berlin and Samuel Petrequin in Brussels contributed.
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