As many as one hundred Italian doctors have succumbed to death after contracting the novel coronavirus while treating the patients, Italy's FNOMCeO health association said on Thursday, Agence France Presse (AFP) reported.
"The number of doctors who have died because of Covid-19 is 100 - perhaps even 101 at the moment, unfortunately," a spokesman for the association told AFP.
The number includes the retired doctors who had been approached by Italy’s government when they faced a dearth of doctors in the hospital after the number of cases of coronavirus rose sharply.
Italy became the epicentre of the disease after China, the country where the virus first emerged. The virus has claimed a world-topping 17,669 lives in Italy.
Italian media reports estimate that 30 nurses and nursing assistants have also died of Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus.
"We can longer allow our doctors, our health workers, to be sent to fight without any protection against the virus. "It is an unfair fight," FNOMCeO president Filippo Anelli said on the association's website.
Rome's ISS public health institute estimates that 10 percent of those infected with the novel coronavirus in Italy work in healthcare.