Italy hails Civil Protection's role in coronavirus emergency

Italy on Monday hailed the key contribution made by the country's Civil Protection Department in the COVID-19 emergency, as fresh daily data confirmed the contagion's downward trends at national level, reported Xinhua.

In an official ceremony at the agency's headquarters here, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, the Health and Regional Affairs ministers, and the Department Chief Angelo Borrelli, thanked the Civil Protection regular staff and thousands of health volunteers fighting the pandemic.

HEALTH PROFESSIONALS HAILED

"Italy has shown the best of itself... (including) citizens who, in most cases, were able to respect the tough restrictive measures we imposed and change their life from one day to the next," Conte said.

The prime minister added that the best proof of all came from the health volunteers.

"I can assure you that, when we launched the call for doctors and nurses to volunteer and saw how many of you answered... the entire national community deeply appreciated your courage," he explained.

Since the government declared a six-month national emergency for the COVID-19 pandemic on Jan. 31, the Civil Protection Department has been tasked by the government with coordinating the national response to the pandemic.

The department put on the ground its 150,000 regular staff to support sanitary, logistic, and communication efforts at central and regional level to contain the virus spread and keep the national community constantly updated on the contagion.

When hospitals started being overloaded with coronavirus cases in the second half of March and there were fears the national health system and its staff might collapse, the department made a public call to doctors and nurses (self-employed, those in private sector, and the retired ones) to volunteer in the emergency task force.

Over 8,000 physicians and 9,000 nurses across the country answered that call, providing what Civil Protection Chief Borrelli on Monday described as "an extraordinary answer."

Engaged on the frontline of the crisis, health professionals in Italy did pay a high price: at least 169 doctors and 40 nurses died from the coronavirus, according to the respective national professional organizations.

At Monday's event, representatives of those who volunteered were given certificates of merit for their commitment, while a larger public awarding ceremony also involving Italy's Presidency of the Republic was announced by the prime minister for Dec. 27.

Conte also paid a somber tribute to all victims of the pandemic, stressing they deserved to be recalled "not as numbers, but as fathers and mothers, relatives and acquaintances."

POSITIVE COVID-19 TRENDS

The statistical bulletin, released later in the day, showed active COVID-19 infections in Italy stood at 20,637, down by 335 over the last 24 hours.

In a further positive sign, the Civil Protection Department said the number of patients in intensive care dropped to 127, down by 21 against Sunday.

Another 2,038 patients are hospitalized with symptoms, down by 276, and the remaining 18,472, or 90 percent of the active infections, are isolated at home with mild symptoms or none at all.

The death toll grew to 34,657 after 23 new fatalities were registered on the daily basis, which represented a new record daily low since March 3.

Meanwhile, some 533 new recoveries were registered, bringing the total of people cured since the beginning of the pandemic to 183,426.

Italy's total number of assessed cases was 238,720, considering active infections, fatalities, and recoveries. This represented an increase of 218 cases against Sunday.

Up to Monday, 5,013,342 swab tests have been carried out across the country, according to the Health Ministry.