Coronavirus, what happened in that Piacenza clinic in February? The true story of a contagion boom

Coronavirus in Piacenza: the true history of the Sant'Antonino clinical case

Sant'Antonino private clinic, Piacenza. A clinic accredited with the health service that with "Casa Piacenza", its "twin" and of the same property (the medical director Mario Sanna), is at the center of a very disturbing case: patients, doctors, head nurse, oss, nurses, women of the cleaners who get sick of Coronavirus already in mid-February, or maybe even earlier, and no information comes out of there. As long as the Everyday occurrence, on March 18, uncover the pot: a cleaning lady dies and it turns out that weeks earlier an old man with the Coronavirus was quickly taken away from the facility.

The Sant'Antonino private clinic, questioned by me on March 6, is silent on everything saying to ask Ausl, the director of the Ausl of Piacenza Luca Baldino tells me that what happens there does not interest him and that he has more important things to deal with . On March 13, the Ausl of Piacenza announces that Sant'Antonino becomes Covid specialized clinic and thanks the clinic for its "sensitivity" in an official statement. And therefore, it is perhaps the time to add all the details of the story, including the various testimonies collected and the new "answers" from the management of the Casa Piacenza and Sant'Antonino, even if once again substantially they attribute all responsibility to the Local Health Authority of Piacenza.

History
In mid-February, when Coronavirus seems not to have arrived in Italy yet, the elderly patient Gino B., admitted to the Sant'Antonino clinic, feels ill. He begins to have a constant fever, which does not go down. In the clinic they think it depends on the fact that his bed is located next to the heater. However, that fever does not pass and at a certain point his neighbor also gets sick. Some doctors are also sick. On February 24, in the clinic, news arrives that Dr. Cremonesi, a retired doctor who carried out some operations at the Piacenza clinic, was hospitalized in Tenerife while he was on vacation: he has Coronavirus. The newspapers and news reports also mention it, but the name of the Piacenza Clinic is never associated with the fact.

Officially, nothing happened in there. No official communication from the owner Mario Sanna, no communication to the families of hospitalized patients, no official communication to all staff. Gino, the old man found positive, is taken away a few days later. On March 16, Monica Rossi, a cleaning lady from Casa Piacenza, is found dead at home. “I could have saved her, I will never forgive myself! I will live my life with this cross on my shoulders! Excuse me if you can Monica! ”, The staff manager of Casa Piacenza Laura Cappellano writes on Facebook.

So what happened from mid-February to that March 16, in the private clinics Casa Piacenza and Sant'Antonino? Many things, and all well silenced by the care manager Nawal Loubadi, by the daughter of the owner Lidia Sanna and by all the managers of the structures. Many employees have continued to work, since that February 24, in a condition of uncertainty and fear, always discovering in reverse ways, for the confidences of doctors, nurses, oss, that the disease was turning in the clinics and that many of them are they were getting sick. Someone had been infected and "went on vacation" or "got sick" in a hurry. The word "Coronvirus" was taboo.

After the cleaning lady's death, however, everything changes. Employees start talking. And many people contact me. An oss from Sant'Antonino tells me, between a cough, the other: “There have been dozens and dozens of positive people for over a month. It all starts with the elderly patient Gino B., in room 8, near the boiling radiator. He always had a very high fever, from about February 10th. They move him to room 15, a triple room. After Coronavirus bursts in Italy they discover, I believe with a plate or a swab, which is positive. They move him to a single room, the 5. Regarding the two patients who were next to him, one died days ago ".

“I don't know how Coronavirus got there in here, but definitely not from hospitalized patients. Here is a Casalpusterlengo nurse who has a mother who is a nurse at the Codogno hospital, a mother who had Coronavirus. The chief of the Sant'Antonino also took Coronavirus in February and apparently his daughter had been at dinner with an intimate friend of the wife of patient 1 of Codogno. The doctor F., the doctor C., the nurse S., the head nurse C., ", the physiotherapist F. and so on, got sick. “The hospital hygiene service called me in mid-March and had a partial employee list. I asked him if S., the Casalpusterlengo employee, was on the list and I was told 'The clinic did not give us this name'. They did not have various names of some sick employees or of the red areas that had to stay at home. "

“We operators of Sant'Antonino are destroyed. We only work for patients. We haven't had an FFP3 mask to do oxygen therapy for weeks, so we will all be infected around that time. We saw panic in here, but no one in the management shared any information with us mortals. At a meeting my colleague N. said she would go to the union, they contested that she was not a serious person. The health problem could have happened, this silence could not ”. “The Covids moved them all here to Sant'Antonino because the operating room is in Casa Piacenza. They could therefore continue to operate and invoice, here we were treated like garbage. Those who had fallen ill with us are now mixed with Covid patients sent from hospitals, so the waters can now be confused. If Luca Baldino from Ausl wants to start investigating, start with the patient Gino B. ". “The problems start from before the emergency. Here we have no soap, gauze, right ointments for dressings. For years, we have been told to recycle the bibs where patients eat. Here everything has always been geared towards savings, with continual management cazziatoni ".

A nurse from Sant'Antonino tells me: “From one shift to the next, I found 80 patients with Covid here without knowing how to manage them. 20 people died in one week. A woman from the Ausl gave us a quick lesson on how to use the overalls, telling us: 'You don't even have to look at the patients, they are all people who will die'. The nurse cries as she tells it. “I wash them, I take care of everyone, for me they are all as if they were my mother, if I save one I am happy. But we are too few here, sometimes I find the diapers of the day before. This morning a patient ripped my soul out. He took my hand and asked me: 'How is my wife, please tell me.' The wife was sick, they die alone, like flies. At least let them die with dignity. If I complain that I need personnel, they tell me: if you don't want to work here, that's the door ”. “We have been asking for tampons for weeks, Coronavirus patients who entered in late January and then had symptoms in February got sick. If they had swabbed everyone, they would have closed because they would have been without staff ”. “I see patients dying like fish without water, this is just a place where very old patients come to die, at least a little dignity for them and security for us. The Ausl must monitor the rigor with which the private sector works, what does Piacenza do? Since the relatives have not entered here, what has been done has been done, who has checked? ”.

A cleaner, colleague of the dead cleaning lady, tells me: “I work at Casa Piacenza. I am destroyed. It hurts to breathe, my head hurts, I'm so afraid, I have a family. I was working with Monica, so I may have taken Coronavirus too. She had a fever, stopped for a few days, then returned to work with a fever and eventually died at home. A colleague of mine is positive, her husband took it from her too, ended up in hospital. Here they did the swab to whoever seemed to them. " “In the meantime I had been going on for weeks with a mask that should be used 8 hours and that I used 1 week. I don't want to die, I have a son. My colleagues are all with fever, I saw the primary every day and I didn't know he was sick, I knew he had Coronavirus after a week. Ditto Dr. C. and who knows how many others ".

Another nurse reveals: “I don't know how Coronavirus entered here at Sant'Antonino. We took blood cultures without knowing that the virus was running. Then one day I find out that the primary's mother died. That the primary has Coronavirus. Our head nurse is from Codogno. They made tampons only to some, then they told us that the tampons were finished, but I saw them in a locker, they were there. My colleague L. had interstitial pneumonia. All sick. Here they now make us a tac, if you don't have symptoms like fever and cough you also work with pneumonia. We are not employees, we are landfills. " “A patient who was staying in the 'Sollievo' room for 3.000 euros a month at Casa Piacenza who was not positive and got the virus here died. We are two nurses out of 40 patients, we don't know where to turn. We are slaughter meat, we and the poor sick. We have the resolution to tie the wrists for their sake because we can't look at them all, otherwise the oxygen will rise. We can't do anything, Urbason is also in short supply for therapies, sometimes I take it from the emergency trolley. If we complain we are told that there is a line outside the door to work there, we can leave. Many of us have decided to speak and that's good. The problems here exploded with Covid, but they started with the management of Mario Sanna, before we worked well with Doctor Agamemnon ".

Luisa says: “My mother-in-law was hospitalized on 13 March at Sant'Antonino with a fever and cough. My husband had a very high fever, but Ausl did not want to swab. On Saturdays we call and we can't talk to anyone. We call three times but they tell me they don't know the patients well yet. In the evening they put my phone down. On Sundays they say that my mother-in-law responds to treatment and to bring a change. They don't answer us the next day. In the end my brother-in-law goes to the clinic with the change the next day at 13.00. They ask him for the lady's name, a doctor comes after 30 minutes and informs him that my mother-in-law died during the night. Nobody warned us! We never had a diagnosis, nothing. Did they cure her for Covid? It's an obscene thing. "

Silvia Bettini, from Piacenza, had her dad at Sant'Antonino, hospitalized on February 13th. “I last saw him on the 23rd. Days later on the phone they tell me he's breezy. Nobody tells us that Coronavirus runs there, but I find out by the wrong way. So one evening my brother called the clinic threatening them, saying 'I know what's going on in there, take my father immediately to the emergency room in Piacenza!'. After half an hour they call us from the emergency room and tell us that my father had arrived malnourished and dehydrated. He was dying and they would have morphine on him. He died a few hours later, at night. We were told that he definitely had Coronavirus because of very severe interstitial pneumonia. He never had treatment for Coronavirus. "

Andrea, the son of a woman who was admitted to Sant'Antonino, tells me: “My mother had been operated on at the Piacenza hospital in late January and then went to Sant'Antonino for rehabilitation. I was all advised against that clinic. She came in on February 25st and stayed until the 26th. My mother and I fell ill with Coronavirus. I got sick on the 25th. They denied that there were cases of Coronavirus, I got angry because a lady who was in the same room as my mother had carers who constantly changed and came twice a day, when the Codogno case had already erupted. They were all with coughs and colds, they told of sick relatives. I quarreled and went to the nurses to report the situation. On the 26th I asked to discharge her: my mother comes home and stays with the caregiver. On the 29th I get sick. The caregiver on the 118th calls me and tells me that mom is sick, on the XNUMX they go to get her and discover pneumonia. In the end she makes the swab and is positive. I inside the Sant'Antonino I saw a terrible atmosphere of fear and silence, the doctors said to me 'Let's not talk here please, they hear us!'. They left healthy and infected together for a long time, they did not inform us relatives that the same primary and doctors with whom we spoke were infected, we all went around Piacenza sick. They ticked patients in February when they understood what was going on, a doctor confirmed it to me, but they chose not to tell the truth how it should be done and immediately to all involved ".

After my first article on Casa Piacenza it came out on The fact on March 18, some of my sources at the facilities told me that the managers of the clinics had an intimidating attitude towards employees, threatening layoffs if they discovered my sources. Regarding the death of the cleaning woman Monica Rossi, Ausl confirmed to her sister Marina the positivity of the swab: “But the general practitioner wrote that my sister Monica died of stroke and - you know what? - Without ever having seen his body after death! When I asked him for explanations he was vague and then he never spoke to me again. "

The response of the clinics

Through the lawyer of the two clinics involved, the lawyer Sacchelli, I asked some written questions to the management, who sent me the following answers.

1. Do you have employees in the red areas of Codogno? If yes, do you know they have been infected or have relatives infected? The Piacenza hospital, which had a positive Codogno nurse, reported this already in February, for transparency. How did you behave? Yes, we have employees from the Codogno areas. The body responsible for managing communications on the positivity of operators or their relatives (including those of the two nursing homes) is the Hygiene Service of the Piacenza Hospital.
2. Your primary C., positive, appears to have a family member, the daughter, who was close acquaintance with a friend of the wife of the patient one of Codogno. It would have been important information to communicate to relatives of patients and patients who came into contact with the primary, to allow the chain of infections to be reconstructed, also within the Sant 'Antonino clinic and in the areas of Piacenza and Codogno. Did you do it? The body responsible for managing communications on the positivity of operators or their relatives (including those of the two nursing homes) is the Hygiene Service of the Piacenza Hospital. We have provided the Hygiene Service with all the data they requested from us in this case.
3. Why was the positivity of the primary (not specifying his identity, but more generally of an employee) and of doctors and head nurse not communicated? It was done through the Hygiene Service of the Piacenza Hospital.
4. Why in other hospitals is the number of employees and postive patients communicated internally for transparency and in the interest of patients and citizens and you keep silent? It has been done, in patient numbers are those published 80 CCPSA and 90 CCPP, the data are those of the Piacenza ASL of which we are part as an Affiliated Private Structure.
5. How many employees of Piacenza and Sant'Antonino are infected today? These are the data that the Piacenza Hospital Hygiene Service has.
6. How do you comment on the internal press release in which you invited the employees to work also with a positive tac and that the tampons were finished? The CT is an examination not foreseen in the protocol but it is the swab. The property has provided the CT free of charge as a screening tool for greater operator protection. "Operators with positive CT but in the absence of symptoms": they are the operators who have evidence of structural changes in the lung not certainly attributable to interstitial virus pneumonia, but attributable to viral pathologies (Rino virus), influenza virus previously encountered.
7. How come you did not make a communication to the staff between nurses, oss and cleaners about the numbers of the infection inside the hospital and you left them unaware and scared? Why did you only swab some employees? We followed the Regional Protocol
8. The first case of patient infected with Sant'Antonino appears to be Mister Gino B., he had a fever already in mid-February, because, apparently, was he (only) swabbed in March? Since that time have you communicated to all the relatives of the patients, for example those of the patient Gino B. and Bettini (remember that the hospital was not Covid at the time) the positivity? We followed the Regional Protocol.
9. And have you communicated to other relatives of the infected patients, including some of the Relief section who had been there for many months, the situation? Regional protocols and prefectural provisions immediately received.
10. Some employees claim to have been willing to tie the wrists to the patients and have done so. Do you want to comment? Talk about the restraint measures provided by any hospital protocol.
11. Doctors and Oss talk about a personal bone risotto, two / three nurses for 40 patients. The shortage of operators, the staff that is there, is working hard to guarantee community service.
12. How did the case of rigged hospitalizations, in which the Piacenza Clinic was involved, end? (he would have performed interventions in the hospitalization regime, albeit short, rather than outpatient, to obtain higher reimbursements from the health service) There is an ongoing procedure.

Source: https://www.tpi.it/cronaca/coronavirus-piacenza-vera-storia-clinica-santantonino-20200330576324/