Italy struggles to make room for onslaught of virus patients

Three weeks into Italy's coronavirus crisis, Dr. Sergio Cattaneo has seen an unused ward outfitted into an intensive care unit in six days, a hospital laundry room converted into a giant stretcher-filled waiting room and a tented field hospital erected outside to test possible new virus patients.

But Cattaneo, head of anesthesiology and intensive care at the public hospital in Brescia in northern Italy, still can't get his head around the curve the upward slope of new infections in Italy that tracks almost exactly the trajectory of cases in Wuhan, China, where the global pandemic began three months ago.

"What is really shocking something we had not been able to forecast and brought us to our knees is the quickness the epidemic spreads, Cattaneo told
The Associated Press during an exclusive tour of Brecia's newest ICU. "If the spreading of this epidemic is not put under control, it will bring all hospitals to their knees."