COVID-19 SPECIAL, from Piacenza, Northern Italy, one of the world's worst hit regions, young Dr Daniela Petraglia on these heart-breaking, stressful past 9 weeks trying to save patients in the grip of virus onslaught, and why Italy's official death number

Young, 3rd-Year Resident, who is yet to graduate in her Specialty training, Dr Daniela Petraglia talks candidly about the almost crushing challenges faced by frontline doctors & nurses caring for the avalanche of ill Covid-19 patients which threatened to collapse the entire hospital system of Emilia-Romagna, one the hardest hit regions of Northern Italy. The heart-breaking decisions forced on senior doctors as to who gets ICU ventilator care and who doesn’t during the crisis peak of late March, April, early May is an experience that haunts her still. Called away from General Practice to come back & work in one of Piacenza’s busiest small hospitals at Castel San Giovanni -- the first COVID19-dedicated hospital in Italy -- Dr Petraglia speaks of the distressing reality of patients crying into their ventilator helmets, fearful & isolated from loved ones for weeks & weeks. How she and her colleagues, many of whom caught the virus themselves, managed in the storm of this disease, and the lessons to learn from Italy. Courageous and incredibly dedicated during these past 2 months, a young doctor’s perspective.