ROME (AP) – As the world said goodbye – or got rid – of 2020, a year in which the pandemic caused billions of hardship and pain, some of those fighting the virus on the front lines beat even the clock. past midnight.
At the Casalpalocco Covid 3 hospital on the outskirts of Rome, doctors and nurses hardly seemed to register for the new year as they tended to treat 100 patients struggling with severe to critical illness due to coronavirus infections.
All but one of the beds in one intensive care unit were occupied. Medical staff quietly cared for patients lying in dimly lit rooms, dispensed medication, checked breathing equipment, and filled out medical records.
“This particular (New Year’s Eve) is a surreal night, just like Christmas, just like the Epiphany, just like Easter past and all the other holidays,” said Dr. Paolo Petrassi, the night shift coordinator. “They are, shall we say, vacations separate from what was once the real world, as we have known it forever.”
The 53-year-old spoke of the experience known to so many in the medical world around the world who have had to treat COVID patients: constantly monitoring and managing patients, each with their own complicated problems.
Worldwide, more than 83 million coronavirus infections have been diagnosed and more than 1.8 million deaths. Along with the elderly, medical staff have been particularly hard hit and are struggling to save patients, even though their own colleagues have become ill from a disease that hardly anyone could have imagined a year ago.
“It was all unexpected,” Petrassi told The Associated Press.
Italy was the early epicenter of the pandemic in Europe in the spring. Pictures of Italian nurses and doctorsexhausted as they took off their protective gear for a moment, became a grim omen of what was to happen months later to their colleagues in Spain, France, the United States and elsewhere.
Last month, after a summer when Italy seemed to have repulsed the plague, it once again became the country with the highest death toll in Europe. And again, the grim reality was reflected in the eyes of Italy’s medical staff.
“Now we are nearly 12 months of this pandemic and unfortunately we still don’t have the opportunity to say it’s over,” said Petrassi. “We only have the hope of the massive vaccination that we hope will help control this ominous phenomenon.”
European regulators approved the first vaccine shortly before Christmas. Countries across the European Union began administering the shots on December 27, but it will be a long time before a significant number of the bloc’s 450 million residents are immunized.
Experts say that at least 60-70% of the population should be vaccinated to prevent the virus from taking hold.
Petrassi hopes COVID’s nightmare will end soon.
“We all live in uncertainty, but at the same time we all hope and do our best,” he said. “We use all of our professional and physical resources, our knowledge and our conscience, and give up time for our families, our free time and our loved ones.”
“We invest all of this so that all these efforts are not in vain.”
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