Italy Now Has More Respirators Than ICU Patients: Official

Medical staff look at the scan of a patient's lungs at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) hosting the COVID-19 patients at the ASST Papa Giovanni XXIII hospital in Bergamo, Italy, on April 3, 2020. Piero Cruciatti/AFP via Getty Images

Italian hospitals for the first time have more respirators than patients with COVID-19 infections, according to a top official.

“This gives us the strength to go forward,” Domenico Arcuri, Italy’s extraordinary commissioner for the COVID-19 emergency, told reporters on Tuesday, reported The Associated Press. The country has 2,500 patients receiving intensive care for the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, a novel coronavirus that causes the disease COVID-19.