ICU nurse Joey Traywick says a patient of his was the first to die of Covid-19 in his hospital, alone. Now he is ‘never going to let that happen again’. Video / MSNBC
The governor of the Italian region with the largest percentage of residents older than 65 has apologised for a tweet which contended the elderly aren't indispensable to the country's production, as Italy battles Covid-19.
The newspaper Corriere della Sera said Liguria Governor Giovanni Toti, in a meeting Sunday with governmentministers, had advocated limiting movement outside the home for those older than 70 in a bid to avoid a generalised, nationwide lockdown amid surging spread of coronavirus infections.
"For as much as every single Covid-19 victim pains us, we must keep in mind this data: Only yesterday among the 25 deaths in Liguria, 22 were very elderly patients," Toti tweeted on Sunday.
They are "persons for the most part in retirement, not indispensable to the productive effort" of the economy, tweeted Toti, who is 52. Nearly 29 percent of Liguria's residents are older than 65, compared to a nationwide percentage of just under 23 percent.
Maurizio Gasparri, a 64-year-old senator, slammed Toti's assessment of the elderly's value as "delirious." Apologising for what he termed "misunderstandings", Toti later claimed his tweet was "badly extrapolated" and blamed it on an error by his social media manager.
Italy registered nearly 2000 fewer new Covid-19 infections in its daily caseload Sunday, but it also conducted some 32,000 fewer swab tests to detect the virus in the last 24 hours.
With 29,907 confirmed new infections, Italy's total known coronavirus cases in the pandemic grew to 709,335, according to Health Ministry figures.
Weekends often see fewer tests carried out. Since Saturday, the deaths of 208 infected persons were registered, raising to 38,826 the number of known dead in the pandemic, the second-highest confirmed toll in Europe.
Italian government officials have been consulting with scientific advisers and regional and municipal representatives as Premier Giuseppe Conte ponders tighter restrictions he is expected to order this week to try to slow the galloping spread of contagion, especially in the areas of Milan in the north and Naples in the south.
