Hospitals across Italy have seen a sharp rise in the number of people seeking emergency care for heat-related illnesses as a heatwave continues to grip the country, with temperatures in Rome setting a new record.
Some hospitals reported a 20-25% increase in the numbers arriving at emergency units suffering from dehydration or other illnesses caused by overexposure to the heat.
Temperatures in Rome hit 41.8C on Tuesday, breaking the previous record of 40.7C set in June 2022. Sicily reached about 41C and there were highs of 45C in Sardinia.
In the southern city of Naples, the Cardarelli hospital said 231 patients had accessed emergency care there within the last 24 hours – the equivalent of one patient every six minutes and the highest daily number since the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.
Most of the patients were elderly, some of them from residential homes. However, people of all ages, including tourists, have been seeking care.
“We are experiencing an extremely delicate moment,” said Antonio d’Amore, the hospital’s director general. Of those who were admitted on Monday, 2% were in a serious condition and 38% were in a moderately critical condition.
“Given the criticality of the moment, I ask citizens to contact the Cardarelli emergency room only in cases of real need,” d’Amore said. “Now we must devote our energies to those who really need care.”
Italy’s health ministry has placed 23 cities including Rome, Florence, Bologna, Bari, Catania, Cagliari, Palermo and Turin on “red alert”, a measure that means the heat is so intense it is considered to pose a threat to the health of the entire population, not just children and elderly people.
The ministry urged people to dress in linen, avoid venturing outside during the hottest hours and cut out alcohol, coffee and fizzy drinks.
It issued a circular advising regional governments to set up “heat codes” in emergency units as a way of prioritising care while providing at-home assistance, especially to the most vulnerable, and boosting out-of-hours doctor services.
Gianfranco Giannasi, the director of emergency care across public hospitals in Tuscany, said there had been an increase of about 10% in people seeking help for illnesses linked to heat across the region’s nine emergency units. Admissions were particularly high at Santa Maria Nuova hospital in central Florence, where many tourists have been seeking care.
“Compared to previous years the situation isn’t so bad, mainly because there is more awareness of the risks and therefore more prevention,” he told Firenze Post. “But problems related to the heat can be seen after a few days of continuous heat, so we are waiting to see what will happen this week.”
Increases in admissions or calls to emergency units have also been reported at hospitals in the southern Puglia region and Veneto in the north.
Research published last week showed there were 61,672 heat-related deaths across Europe last summer, which was the hottest on record. The mortality rate was highest in Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal.
“We are a country with one of the oldest populations, and when age is coupled with health problems such as heart conditions or breathing difficulties, the addition of the heat creates a fatal situation,” said Giovanni Leoni, the vice-president of an Italian doctors’ federation.
Extreme heat caused by the climate emergency has led to temperature records being broken across the northern hemisphere this summer. Last month was globally the hottest June on record, and the first days of July were estimated to be the hottest days ever recorded. Ocean temperatures in the north Atlantic are unusually high.
California’s Death Valley, often the hottest place on Earth, reached 53.3C on Sunday, nearly a world record. On the same day, China issued several heat alerts and recorded its highest ever temperature, 52.2C in the western Xinjiang region.
In Europe, back-to-back heatwaves have sent temperatures soaring across Italy, Spain, France, Serbia, Croatia and Greece, with wildfires spewing smoke into the air.
Heat records are being broken because of human-caused global heating amid continuing greenhouse gas emissions, supercharged by an emerging El Niño event. Temperatures and extreme weather are forecast to continue to rise until global emissions are cut to net zero. Emissions hit a new high last year.
Human-caused global heating makes every heatwave in the world more intense and more likely to happen, and Europe’s summer heat in 2022 would have been virtually impossible without global heating.
