the healthiest place in Italy today? "Vo: Italy's coronavirus ground zero" -- Re: Coronavirus: Thread

[Zenaan Harkness]

On Fri, Mar 06, 2020 at 12:02:11PM +1100, Zig the N.g wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 05, 2020 at 07:35:33PM -0500, grarpamp wrote:
> > On 3/5/20, Georgi Guninski <guninski at guninski.com> wrote:
> > > Is the so called "society" ready for the time when there
> > > are not enough hospitals for ill from corona virus?
> > >
> > > AFAIK all ill from corona virus are sent to hospitals
> > > to not spread the disease further.
> > >
> > > The Chinese built a new hospital for about a week.
> > 
> > General purpose hospital is utterly stupid thing to
> > be flooding cases into under a mass affliction.
> > Hospital are general triage and specialized case facilities.
> > Flood them with disease transmitters and you end up
> > wiping out the entire staff thus shutting the entire hospital down.
> > Staff and facilities are far more valuable alive to handle the
> > random shit that shows up at hospitals and do the specialized things.
> 
> Depends on what your goals are though, right?  Georgian guidestones..


For those who enjoy living, where's the healthiest place in Italy, as of yesterday?

That would be "ground zero" of Italy's coronavirus outbreak - the town of Vo, due to their procedure:

  Coronavirus is devastating Italy, but one town says its testing regime is containing the outbreak
  https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-21/one-italian-town-is-bucking-the-countrys-coronavirus-curve/12075048

    COVID-19 has killed more people in Italy than any other country.

    The death toll is now higher than China's, and the number of infections continues to grow.

    Hospitals are now so overloaded that Italian doctors have been forced to choose who they treat.

    The military had to move coffins from the cemetery in Bergamo to neighbouring provinces because there was no room left to bury them.

    Italy's Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte imposed a nationwide lockdown to prevent what he called "the collapse of the system".

    But one small town in the country's north says it is doing surprisingly well.

    Vo, in the region of Veneto, is right in the middle of what Italy is calling its coronavirus red zone.

    But local officials say there hasn't been a new case of COVID-19 there since March 13.

    The town had the first confirmed COVID-19-related death in Italy — a 78-year-old man on February 23.

    It was one of 11 villages in the country's north which were shut down as the country's outbreak began.

    The town swung into action — and its measures appear to be working.

    What did Vo do?

    Researchers from the University of Padua, along with Veneto regional officials and the Red Cross, decided to test all residents for COVID-19.

    Around 3,300 people were tested, even if they had no symptoms.

    "We tested everybody," Andrea Crisanti, professor of microbiology at the University of Padua, told the ABC's The World Today.

    Nearly 3 per cent — or 89 Vo residents — were infected with COVID-19.

    Even more alarming for Professor Crisanti and his colleagues was that many of the patients had no symptoms.

    Professor Crisanti said Italian health authorities did not seem concerned by Vo's infection rate.

    So the town took charge.

    Vo put all COVID-19 patients in lockdown

    Every Vo resident who tested positive for the virus was put in quarantine in their homes.

    "They were asked not to go out, and not to have contact with any other people," Professor Crisanti said.

    The researchers decided against sending patients to hospital to prevent them spreading the disease there.

    "In principle many people in the hospital were infected. Many doctors, many nurses, many patients. This could be a major source of infection," he said.

    After two weeks of quarantine, the researchers carried out another round of mass testing in Vo.

    The rate of COVID-19 infection had dropped from nearly 3 per cent to 0.41 per cent.

    Luca Zaia, the governor of Veneto, has now declared the town of Vo the "healthiest place in Italy".

    ''This is proof that the testing system works,'' he told the Italian news agency ANSA.

    Vo says testing and social isolation is key

    Professor Crisanti acknowledges that mass testing would be harder to carry out in a large city.

    ...