MILAN, April 5 (Reuters) - It took Silvia Bertuletti 11 days of frantic phone calls to persuade a doctor to visit her 78-year-old father Alessandro, who was gripped by fever and struggling for breath.
Reuters:

When an on-call physician did go to her house near Bergamo, at the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak in northern Italy, on the evening of March 18, it was too late.
Reuters: Alessandro Bertuletti was pronounced dead at 1:10 a.m. on March 19, 10 minutes before an ambulance called hours earlier arrived. The only medication he had been prescribed, over the phone, was a mild painkiller and a broad-spectrum antibiotic.
Reuters:

"My father was left to die alone, at home, without help," Bertuletti, 48, said. "We were simply abandoned. No one deserves an end like that."
Reuters: Interviews with families, doctors and nurses in Italy's stricken Lombardy region indicate that Bertuletti's experience is not uncommon, that scores are dying at home as symptoms go unchecked and that phone consultations are not always enough.
Reuters: In Bergamo province alone, according to a recent study of death records, the real death toll from the outbreak could be more than double the official tally of 2,060, which only tracks hospital fatalities.
Reuters: Italy's official death toll reached 15,362 on Saturday, almost a third of the global total, but there is growing evidence that this vastly understates the real total because so many people are dying at home.
Reuters: A study by local newspaper L'Eco di Bergamo and research consultant InTwig, using data provided by local municipalities, estimates that 5,400 people died in the Bergamo province during the month of March, or six times more than a year ago.
Reuters: Of these, it reckons that as many as 4,500 people succumbed to the coronavirus - more than double the official tally. This took into account 600 people who died in nursing homes and evidence provided by doctors, it said.
Reuters: More than 11,000 health workers have contracted the virus in Italy and 80 have died, many of them family doctors.
Reuters: “We are used to seeing people die, but normally it feels like you are accompanying them at the end of the road," said Maura Zucchelli, a nurse at Itineris, a private company which provides medical assistance at home in the Bergamo area.
Reuters: "Now you go to people's homes, and within 48-72 hours the patient is dead. It's draining. It's like war."
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