Italy’s doctors seek help from robots

VARESE, Italy: The shiny new robots gently check the pulses of highly infectious patients on life support in the Italian epicentre of COVID-19.

The doctors and nurses love them because they also help save their own lives.

Italians have seen the world around them turn unrecognisable from the various lockdowns and social distancing measures used to fight the new coronavirus outbreak.

But little appears to have pained them as much as seeing dozens of doctors and nurses die while trying to save the tens of thousands of patients who have suddenly ended up in hospitals across Italy’s pandemic-hit north.

The country’s medical association said on Friday that at least 70 medics have died from various causes since Italy recorded the first official COVID-19 death on February 21.

The fear is that an overwhelmingly majority of the 70 would still be alive today had they been better protected against the coronavirus.

This helps explain why the doctors are nurses in a hospital near Italy’s mountainous border with Switzerland are laughing behind their facemasks while posing for photos with their new robot friends.