The cancer patients being treated in their homes due to COVID

Doctors in Italy fear another health emergency may soon arise – that of non-COVID patients neglected during the pandemic.

Cremona and Milan, Italy – “We can leave the house now, right?” Ermelinda Bonesi, an energetic 72-year-old asks the oncologist and the nurse visiting her apartment in Gussola, a village about 30 minutes from the city of Cremona, in Lombardy, Italy. Ermelinda has been self-isolating for nearly two months after she – and then her husband – caught the coronavirus. The hope is that today her PCR test will show a negative result and that she will be able to resume her chemotherapy, for the breast cancer she has been battling on and off for 30 years. It is recommended that cancer patients with COVID suspend their chemotherapy treatment as it can increase the risk of severe complications from the virus. “What really depresses me though, is this virus,” Ermelinda says as nurse Roberta Marchi finishes swabbing her nose.