The Italian city of Lodi in Lombardy saw more than 50 people hospitalised with coronavirus in a single night with 17 cases deemed to be especially serious.
The new hospitalisations were announced by populist Lombardy president Attilio Fontana, a member of Matteo Salvini’s League, who said that 51 people had been taken into hospital with serious cases of the coronavirus and 17 placed in intensive care, Il Giornale reports.
According to Fontana, the hospital in Lodi does not have the capacity to hospitalise all of the people in its intensive care ward and so several people were transferred to other hospitals in the region.
The cases place the number of infected in Lombardy to over 400. The Italian total has been reported as being at least 650.
According to the Lombardy government, “Today in Lombardy there are 406 positive cases of coronavirus, of which 216 hospitalised. More than half are asymptomatic, are at home and are well.”
While cases of the virus continue to grow, at least 37 people have been deemed to have recovered from the virus and have been discharged from regional hospitals.
Italy has quickly become the country with the third-largest number of coronavirus cases behind China, where the virus originated, and South Korea, with at least half of Italy’s regions having one or more confirmed cases of the virus.
“Patient one” was identified as a man named “Mattia” who had not been to China and was forced to wait a full 36 hours before being tested for the virus.
It is said that Mattia was able to interact with hospital staff, family, and friends who may have all become infected as a result.
Mattia was initially named “patient zero” and was believed to have been the first person to bring the virus to Italy but that was later proven not to be the case, and patient zero has yet to be identified.
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