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The coronavirus is out of control of in Northern Italy. As of 6 pm local / 1 pm EST on March 10, there were 15,113 total cases in Italy, with 12,839 active cases, 1,016 deaths, and 1,258 recoveries. There are 162 total cases here in Rome.
The hardest-hit region around Milan has had to improvise as its health system has been deeply stressed by the sheer number of patients. In Milan and Brescia, field hospitals have been set up in the fairgrounds as the local hospitals have been drowned in patients.
Because the demand for respirators and intensive care has been beyond any previous planning, doctors have been forced into the kind of triage thinking developed for intense battlefield casualty situations. There are reports that emergency room doctors are allotting respirators to those with higher life expectancy due to the limited equipment in the hardest-hit areas of the province. If you are older or have other illnesses, you may simply not be eligible for treatment.