国际英语资讯:Italy records high coronavirus death, cure totals as officials search for more doctors_时事

国际英语资讯:Italy records high coronavirus death, cure totals as officials search for more doctors

Health officials across the country are scrambling for ways to put more doctors in the field to help contain the outbreak.

On Wednesday, officials in the hard-hit region of Lombardy, which includes Milan, appealed to recently retired health workers to return to work to relieve over-worked colleagues.

A day earlier, Minister of University and Research Gaetano Manfredi proposed letting soon-to-graduate medical students start work in low-pressure jobs as a way to let experienced colleagues work on the front-lines of the outbreak.

But there was some good news on Wednesday.

Vo, a small town near Venice in northern Italy, reported the successful outcome of a test case in which the entire population of 3,300 people was tested for coronavirus whether they showed symptoms or not and a strict quarantine was imposed. According to news reports, the town -- which was near the center of the first wave of infections in Italy -- has shown no new cases since Friday.

"The testing was vital and it saved many lives," mayor Giuliano Martini is reported as saying.

Testing may soon become easier as well. Researchers at the Campus Bio-Medico Polyclinic in Lazio, the region that includes the Italian capital of Rome, reported Wednesday that they have begun using an artificial intelligence diagnostic system first used in hospitals in Wuhan, China, where the coronavirus first emerged.

The system used analysis of a CT scan of the lungs to make a coronavirus diagnosis in as little as 20 seconds with an accuracy rate of 98.5 percent. According to Alessio D'Amato, the Lazio government's top health official, the system will be made available to the entire Lazio hospital system.