“We only have a few minutes, tell me.” Professor Matteo Bassetti is in hospital, busy treating his patients. We contacted him a month ago: the scenario, at the time, was completely different: infections reduced to a minimum, as well as deaths and hospitalized people. The virus seemed to be retreating as it now advances.
Professor, what happened?
There has been a rather unexpected and almost sudden acceleration of infections and, inevitably, hospitalizations, especially in some areas. Compared to what happened last spring, today there is a more homogeneous distribution on the national territory, even if in some areas there is a potentially more important and frequent circulation of the virus than in March and April. Let’s take Genoa: one in four swabs is practically positive. There is a great circulation of the virus which, inevitably, leads to an important number of hospitalizations which, fortunately, today touch low-medium complexity and not intensive care as it happened in the past. We cannot know what will happen tomorrow: whether things will remain stable or whether hospitalizations will increase. But now it is important to act.
Come?
I really liked what has been done in the Dpcm and what Regions and Municipalities are doing: we need to intervene where the situation has gotten out of hand, without completely killing the economy. I would use limitations, but I wouldn’t call them a curfew because we are not at war. These expressions are not good for people who, for nine months, have been experiencing a situation of anxiety and terror towards the virus. We use soft terms without being soft. And most importantly, we try to achieve stronger results.
In Milan there are more and more cases. What are you worried about?
Milan is a large city with 1.4 million inhabitants. Massive circulation of the virus would lead to an epidemic in the city and an increase in hospital admissions. However, this epidemic had to be managed with a different organization. If it is true that we are at 93-94% of symptomatic and asymptomatic pauses, these should be managed by territorial medicine. It is clear that if the burden of the less symptomatic reaches the hospital, the health system would collapse. If we think everything is at the expense of the hospital, then the structures are blown up.
But how was this possible?
I spent months asking to equip ourselves and, above all, telling people that this is an infection that can be managed at home. It wasn’t done. People have been told that this was a devastating, complicating virus that they will all end up intubated and so as soon as someone has a symptom, they rush to the hospital for treatment. What happened is that we left people at home to die, but that’s not true. Maybe there were some delays in the beginning, but it’s not true that we left people to die alone in the house. It never happened.
They called her a denier. What do you reply?
I don’t want to go back, I have received personal attacks, against my person and my family. In the last week, a certain press killed me. When all this is over, I will make my reflections …
How do we get out of this emergency, given that winter is still long?
We must continue as we did: surgically where things don’t work. We make areas with limited circulation, gathering bans but very targeted. Generalized interventions are of little use. The result of the lockdown was there, but we have to put everything on the scale. However, we cannot do six / eight months with bulletins and reports of disasters. I don’t think this is the best way to do information. We will see many more deaths in the coming months, but we must remember that every year in our country about 10 thousand people die from complications of the flu and another 17 thousand people from respiratory complications. Going for a report on what the current epidemic problem is does not pay off. In the end, the news is always how many are dead and no one ever looks at how many are healed. This communication, which always starts from what is negative, does not help the consciences of Italians. After nine months, people are in trouble. Especially if you don’t give her a hope of getting out.
–
