Sign up for our special edition newsletter to get a daily update on the coronavirus pandemic.
The coronavirus pandemic has exacted a heavy toll on medical workers in northern Italy, but the situation is far different in a hospital in the southern city of Naples — where armed guards and high-tech equipment keep them safe, according to a report.
The Cotugno Hospital, which specializes in infectious diseases and has only been treating coronavirus patients lately, has had time to prepare for the onslaught and taken extraordinary steps to protect its doctors and other staff, according to Sky News, which got an inside look.
While 66 doctors have died as a result of the pandemic in Italy, according to numbers compiled by the National Federation of Orders of Surgeons and Dentists, not a single health care worker has been affected at Cotugno, the news outlet reported.
The sickest patients at the facility are treated by staff wearing ultra-high-tech masks and hermetically sealed, waterproof suits — and who follow proper protocols to the max, including separating infected areas from sterile ones.
Lest anyone forget, armed security guards patrol the corridors.
At one point, a nurse swooped in with a syringe as a patient was quickly deteriorating in one of the rooms. The nurse passed the needle to colleagues inside the room via a compartment and then removed their gloves and scrubbed down.
When new patients are brought in, the corridors are locked down to prevent the spread of the virus.
“This is the first thing to do in this kind of hospital,” Dr. Roberto Parrella, chief of respiratory medicine, told Sky News.
“It’s very, very important to separate the street [corridor] and so on, to organize how [to] dress and undress, how [to] put a doctor or nurse in the room, how [to] put your mask on right, it’s very important,” he added.
The doctors at the hospital acknowledged that it was virtually impossible for their northern counterparts to be as thorough amid the tidal wave — which they refer to as the “tsunami” — of patients.
