ROME – Doctors and nurses in Italy's overwhelmed northern hospitals have welcomed a slight stabilizing in the number of coronavirus infections but fear the virus is still silently spreading in the south two weeks into the West's most extreme nationwide shutdown.
As the dead in Italy keep piling up, virologists warn that the actual number of Italy’s positive cases is up to five times as high as the official count of 80,539.
That means infections will still climb even with Italians ordered to stay home for all but essential activity. Italy, the epicenter of Europe's pandemic, has by far the most virus deaths of any nation in the world, a grim tally of 8,165.