Doctor on frontline in Italy’s fight against virus

As a second wave of COVID-19 sweeps across Italy leaving tens of thousands infected and hundreds of deaths every day, Dr Elisabetta Teti, a 39-year-old infectious disease specialist, is girding herself for months of hard work and emotional strain struggling to save lives.

On a recent 12-hour shift at the Policlinico Tor Vergata in Rome, a teaching hospital, Teti was handling two sub-intensive care COVID-19 units with 28 patients, 18 of them in breathing helmets. She was also supervising the COVID-19 cases flowing non-stop into the emergency room, a total of roughly 70 people infected by the coronavirus. She explained that the pace has returned to what it was in March.

Patients come in in bad condition, in 24 hours they pass from the emergency room with a simple oxygen mask, to a sub-intensive care unit with an oxygen helmet, to being intubated in the intensive care unit. As Teti arrived for her shift, the overnight team was dealing with a patient who had died during the night. Nurses rolled the body away on a stretcher and Teti turned her attention to the living.

One of the most time-consuming parts of her job these days is dressing and undressing to visit the patients. Teti "dresses up" in a special sanitized room where she puts on a protective robe, two pairs of gloves taped around the wrists, two face masks, a hair cap and a visor.

With patients in oxygen helmets and Teti behind various layers of protective gear, communication is not easy, but her energy and warmth break through as she passes from bed to bed, exuding confidence and optimism that she passes to her patients. It is harder when she is back in the doctors' room. When asked about whether she was ever afraid or sad working with so many coronavirus patients, Teti fought back tears as she described the emotional stress of trying to keep people alive when there is no cure.

The Tor Vergata hospital offered psychiatric support sessions to the medical staff last spring. Teti said most of them found excuses to avoid it, but now they all realize they need it. Italy has surpassed one million confirmed coronavirus cases and has recorded the second highest death toll in Europe.