Italy is the second worst-hit country of the Coronavirus pandemic. Now, with the continuous rise of infected citizens, it was reported that an emergency plan was recently drawn in case the situation in the country worsens.

According to The Daily Mail, Italian officials warned that they could be entering the “riskiest weeks” where they would have reached the point when it is already impossible to treat all the people who caught the dreaded COVID-19 virus. In this case, it was proposed that doctors will have to give up treating citizens who are 80 years old and above.

The patients’ health condition and ability to recover from resuscitation will also be considered if they will still be treated or not. Such a brutal proposal was made in Turin, a region in Piedmont, located near Lombardy where the highest number of Coronavirus cases was recorded.

The plan was prepared and suggested by the civil protection officials who issued a warning that the time may come that it would be necessary to apply the criteria they have drawn up with regards to the patients’ access to intensive care treatment. If they will come to the point that there are already too many patients for them to handle, The Telegraph reported that doctors will be forced to choose who will live and who will die.

This is basically saying that they will be leaving the elders to die. These seniors will not be receiving intensive care anymore if the situation worsens because, by that time, the beds at the ICU will not be enough to accommodate all the patients. Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said that they have not reached that peak yet but Lombardy governor Attilio Fontana revealed the situation around Milan is just getting worse at the moment.

“We are close to the point where we will no longer be able to resuscitate people because we will be out of intensive care unit beds,” Fontana told Italy’s Sky channel TG24 via The Daily Mail. “We need those machines that are used to ventilate lungs and artificial respirators that unfortunately we cannot find.”

The councilor for health in Piedmont, Luigi Icardi, said that he hopes that he will not witness such a moment where medical professionals will be forced to abandon the elderly so that the younger and healthier patients will survive. Meanwhile, Fox News reported that Italy's coronavirus cases jumped on Sunday with death toll already reaching 1,800.

The country recorded over 3,500 new cases in one day and increasing the nationwide total of 24,700. Apparently, the COVID-19 has been spreading rapidly across Europe, and Italy is the most affected part of the region.

Coronavirus, COVID-19 Italy
Health workers help the relatives of prisoners outside the Rebibbia prison, on March 9, 2020 in Rome, Italy. Six inmates have died as violent protests broke out in 27 Italian prisons. Relatives of prisoners have protested over new containment measures of the coronavirus emergency after the government decided to restrict visitation. The number of confirmed cases of the Coronavirus COVID-19 disease in Italy has jumped up to at least 6,387, while the death toll has surpassed 366. Antonio Masiello/Getty Images
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