Over-80s, sick may be abandoned to their fate

• Coronavirus victims in Italy could be left to die if they are aged 80 or more, or in poor health, under draft plans drawn up for the next phase of the crisis.

The victims will be denied access to intensive care should pressure on beds increase, according to a new regional protocol, seen by The Sunday Telegraph, from the government’s crisis management unit in Turin.

The document lays out in cold detail which patients receive treatment in intensive care and which do not if there are insufficient spaces.

As of Monday, 2,158 people had died and 27,980 been infected by coronavirus in Italy — the second highest number of reported cases and deaths in the world behind China. The rate of death is far higher due to the country’s large elderly population.

Inside the Bergamo cemetery, the epicentre of the outbreak in the north, dozens of coffins fill the Ognissanti church, now an emergency mortuary storing corpses after the region’s two hospitals could hold no more.

With funerals banned, the city crematorium began operating on a 24- hour schedule to keep up.

“To see entire generation of Bergamo residents taken in this way — it is unthinkable,” said one doctor at Hospital Pope John XXIII, where nearly 150 have died in recent days.

Severa Belotti, 82 and Luigi Carrara, 86, died in hospital after being confined for days at home with fevers. They had been married 60 years.

“The psychological impact on the elderly population has been dramatic. To say ‘ you will be sacrificed in ICU because there are more elderly victims and you have less of a chance of making it,’ well that is an alarming situation,” said Eleonora Selvi, spokesman for the Senior Italia Federanziani association for the elderly.

Pressure on the intensive care capacity in Bergamo increased after 71 of the region’s doctors, nurses and health- care workers tested positive for the virus. Many of them now lie in crowded wards with oxygen helmets hooked up to respiration tubes.

One exasperated anesthesiologist revealed this week that the lack of available breathing machines and beds were already forcing doctors to make devastating decisions about who to save and who to let die, based on age and health conditions.

“We decide depending on their age and the condition of their health. That is not me saying that, but the medical procedure manuals,” Christian Salaroli, 48, told Corriere della Sera, the Milan daily.

“If a patient aged 80- 95 has massive respiratory problems, plus organ failure, then its all over.”