An Italian journalist is warning Britons to ‘stay home’ amid the coronavirus pandemic as one of the country’s top doctors warns Covid-19 is ‘apocalyptic’.

(Article by Jack Wright republished from DailyMail.co.uk)

The stark pleas to ban mass gatherings, avoid contact with others, and self-isolate in the UK and US come as 60million Italians are forced to endure a lockdown.

Mattia Ferraresi, who writes for Il Foglio, has argued the Italian Government wasted time in not acting decisively and drastically early on.

He said that Italy's universal healthcare system has been 'felled' by Covid-19, which has infected 17,000 confirmed cases in the Mediterranean country.

The Italian journalist described life in the lockdown as an 'exercise in humility' and urged Britons to sacrifice 'individual freedom in order to protect everybody'.

Writing in The Boston Globe newspaper, Mr Ferraresi, of Rome, said: 'Until last week, the Italian public healthcare system had the capacity to care for everyone.

'Our country has universal healthcare, so patients aren't turned away from hospitals here. But in a matter of days, the system was being felled by a virus that I, and many other Italians, had failed to take seriously.

'It didn't have to come to this. We of course couldn't stop the emergence of a previously unknown and deadly virus.

'But we could have mitigated the situation we are now in, in which people who could have been saved are dying. I, and too many others, could have taken a simple yet morally loaded action: We could have stayed home.'

He blasted 'less-than-urgent appeals to the public' by Governments across the planet to make small behavioural changes, arguing 'when the terrible outcomes they are designed to prevent... become evident, it's generally too late to act'.

'When everybody's health is at stake, true freedom is to follow instructions,' he said.

Read more at: DailyMail.co.uk