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patients on ventilators
overwhelmed doctors
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face masks lockdowns
army trucks taking away the bodies of
covid19 victims
and new infections and deaths reported
every day until march 2020
these were images only seen in china
where the virus felt far away
but in the blink of an eye it had hit
northern italy and spread to the whole
of europe
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in a matter of weeks a worldwide
pandemic would be declared
and our lives would never be the same
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welcome to our kobe 19 special on dw i'm
monica johnson berlin
and i vividly remember sitting here in
the studio last year reporting
on the horrors in the italian region of
lombardy
little did we know that kobe 19 would
soon dominate
all our lives and still does
bergamo may once again look like a quiet
northern italian city
but it was here that the pandemic gained
its foothold in europe
it was the first place where the horrors
of covet 19 were felt outside of china
emergency stations were transformed into
intensive care units
and not all patients could be treated
cemeteries were overflowing and military
trucks had to transport coffins out of
the city
the pope john the 23rd hospital was at
the center of the outbreak
today the number of coronavirus patients
is a small fraction of a year ago
the director of the emergency station
suspects that bergamo's residents have
developed a form of herd immunity to the
virus
many of the people who had antibodies in
their blood last march were tested again
in december
and they still had antibodies in their
blood eight months later of those people
hardly anyone was infected again
after the first wave the city's health
officials ordered extensive blood tests
these showed who had already been
infected
more than 40 percent of those tested had
antibodies against covid19
perhaps explaining why significantly
fewer people were infected during the
second wave
in late 2020 but now another problem has
officials concerned
i think we may have survived the worst
of it but it's far from over
we have to look carefully at the
mutations that are spreading
because they could completely change the
virus
and the situation here
the outbreak left even survivors
traumatized
and it wiped out nearly an entire
generation of seniors
among them stefano fusco's grandfather
there's a saying that fits this tragedy
very well
every time an old man dies it's like a
library was burned down
we saw a lot of libraries burn here it's
a huge wound that will never heal
he said the lockdown in bergamo came
much too late to save those like his
grandfather
he founded an organization to seek
justice
and take legal action against the public
officials he said let it happen
five thousand people joined up but for
now
fusco says he wants to transform anger
into something constructive
and one year after the coronavirus
catastrophe
to make sure that something like that
never happens again
and i'm joined now on the line by enrico
starti head of the critical care
department and icu
at cremona hospital in italy criminal of
course
also being a beautiful old town in the
lombardy region that was hit
by the pandemic last spring and dr
stoughton you were right in the thick of
it
how did you experience that terrible
first wave last spring
yeah yeah i personally can recall
exactly the time when
we knew that we were facing uh kobe 19
because we have been the very first one
to diagnose
this uh infection in europe and uh
at that time it was clear that we were
forced to
to face something which was uh uh
totally unexpected
and nobody did it in the last
100 years here in europe so
it was the idea that we have to find
the way to fight
against a pandemic
problem which was really astonishing at
that time
and you had to make hard choices also
something that you probably don't have
to do every day
yeah i think that uh what should be
clear
is that uh um the the scenario we were
forced to
to face was a sort of worse scenario a
sort of mass casualty
problem where the definition of mass
casualty is when there's a huge
disproportion between the number of
patients
you have to to take care to take care
and
the resources that you have available so
at that
time was very difficult and important to
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balance the resources which
means physicians which means ventilators
which means
bad and how to re-rearrange and reshape
the hospital organization to meet
something
which was totally different from the
routine
uprising that must have been very tough
i mean are all your colleagues still on
board or did some
say this this is too much i quit
yeah i promise you that as i mentioned
uh
to cope with the situation with a sort
of a worse scenario worse situation
uh what was the shift what was the
uh let me say the peacetime organization
was
totally reverted so uh
it's clear that at that time there were
many many hours to be to be covered in
terms of shift
and also let me say that uh
kobe 19 for an intensivist means
severe respiratory distress which means
a huge need of icu care
so the physicians were tired
impressed by a number of patients with a
very
critical condition and so nobody quit
nobody say no
nobody surrendered to the situation but
if you are asking me what has been the
cost
of this choice for sure has been
extremely high
so what is the situation now compared to
a year ago
let me say that from the organizational
perspective of course now we are
well prepared and we we know
better this kind of of pathology this
kind of infection the very beginning
this was totally unknown and so that was
an issue at that time
now we are we are more ready and we have
a more
uh deeper knowledge about what we have
to do and about
what the covenanting infection is but
unfortunately
meantime we are speaking uh the curve
infection curve and the
epidemiologic uh prospectus is uh
very close to the first way so
unfortunately i think that we have to
fight a little bit
longer waiting for the vaccine
strategy
just very briefly if you could utter a
wish to
politicians what do they need to do now
i think that we have to talk each other
and we have to
balance again the
actual resources what is
now available and forecasting very
widely
what to do in the in the next two
three months in order to address our
effort
all right doctor and rico storti from
criminal hospital in italy
thank you so much thank you
now one positive side effect of the
pandemic more people have been getting a
flu jab
but there are still reservations towards
covet-19 vaccines
are they justified time to ask derek
my elderly in-laws have already survived
the infection
is vaccination recommended for them
i'm not a doctor and your in-laws need
to talk to one
about what's recommended for their
specific
unique medical situation but
they can go into that discussion
informed so
let's go back over a few fundamentals of
this pandemic
that are important to keep in mind first
and foremost the elderly are the group
most at risk when they get this disease
in some places
four in five of the people who've died
from covid19
have been over 65 that's why in
vaccine rollouts nearly everywhere
the elderly are at the top of the
distribution list because
evidence is now really piling up that
vaccines
really do reduce severe disease
hospitalization
and death in that group second
in trials older people generally
responded
very well to approved vaccines and
going on 300 million shots worldwide
they're still doing so so the chances
that a vaccine will present some kind of
danger
to their health are vanishingly small
and there's a reason why which is
vaccines don't make you sick many people
still have to be reminded of that
approved vaccines don't contain sars
cov2 they contain things
that fake an infection with it and that
can cause side effects
as your immune system reacts sometimes
even fairly powerful side effects but
but those are signs the vaccine is
working and are almost
always quite short-term um the third
point
i want to make is that health
authorities pretty much
all recommend everyone get vaccinated
when they have the chance
even if they had the disease and have
recovered
because then the vaccine acts as a
booster
and can help shore up the immune
response
even more um there might be some
instances for example where someone is
extremely frail or
where there are serious underlying
conditions
where doctors might recommend
postponing vaccination but if they were
recommending that from my in-laws
i'd certainly make them explain why
because
vaccines save lives
derek williams will be back next week as
we'll call with 19th special thanks for
watching