An all-Italian ridge: We have fans but not the medical staff to make them work

At least 4.000 resuscitator anesthetists are needed to operate the 8.288 intensive care places that can be immediately activated in Italy but which the regions have not fully activated, leaving 1670 ventilators already delivered in the boxes while another 1300 are available but not yet delivered to the regions. 

The virus spreads quickly, the Rt indices increase their values ​​every day, the patients in intensive care are more numerous, to date about 700. The need to have an important number of intensive therapies reappears. At the beginning of the first wave of the pandemic, intensive care units were just over 4500 scattered throughout the country, most of them in the center north. Today, after the government's interventions, there are just under 8300, a number that may not be enough with the second wave of the pandemic that is apparently more contagious at the gates of a long winter. 

Faced with a scenario whose premises lead to think of a next dramatic phase in the fight against the coronavirus, the controversy between the central government and the presidents of the regions is mounting.

"We are not in a dramatic phase, the fans are in the availability of the regions", says the Commissioner Dominic Arcuri. The Minister for Regional Affairs echoes him Francesco Boccia who appealed to the governors: "You need to turn on all the lung ventilators we have deployed. We can reach up to 0 thousand places in intensive care immediately available ”. 

La Repubblica reports Arcuri's accusations: Lombardy is among the regions that has not activated all the fans, of the 383 fans it has mounted only 122. The councilor for health Gallery responds to vitriol: "We are all using the ventilators, for the extension of intensive care Arcuri has not yet identified who has to do the jobs in the hospitals, the only shortcomings are his "

1670 fans were sent to the regions by the emergency commissioner Arches but apparently they are still closed in the warehouses because there are no doctors and nurses to put them into operation. Repubblica takes it as an example Abruzzo: 123 seats before the pandemic, only 10 more now despite 66 fans delivered. 
The region passes through the one with the highest saturation rate in Italy but the head of intensive care of L'Aquila Franco Marinangeli explains: "We are on the eve of the emergency, we have six Covid intensive care places occupied, we can activate up to 30 places, should there be a need. The reason why we do not open other modules is linked to the difficulty of finding staff: and this is an emergency in an emergency because we will be forced to transfer staff from other departments with a consequent reduction in performance for other pathologies ".  

In Veneto, Zaia states: "We have intensive therapies to cure a thousand people". From the 494 preCovid seats, with the 283 fans provided by Arcuri, the Veneto region should have activated 777 seats and instead already has 825 available, with a percentage of 16,8 beds per 100.000 inhabitants, the highest in Italy. 
Val d'Aosta has also more than doubled and Friuli Venezia Giulia has already activated 175 places, more than the 167 planned. Emilia Romagna, with 412 fans, is the region that has received the highest endowment but is far from having activated the 861 scheduled places and has 516 ready. Lazio 176 out of 240 and Campania used half of its equipped with 281 fans. In Umbria the 60 fans arrived are all still in the warehouses. 

The only certain thing is that the exchanges of accusations between the government and the regions lead us to think that there is still a lot of confusion, that is, a manifest inability to deal with the new wave of the pandemic emergency that, this time, had been widely announced.

An all-Italian ridge: We have fans but not the medical staff to make them work

| EVIDENCE 4, ITALY |