A HORRIFYING video taken in an Italian Covid hospital features what appears to be a corpse collapsed in a toilet as wards overflow with patients.
The unidentified man was believed to be a coronavirus sufferer who had been waiting for a test in Cardarelli Hospital's packed A&E waiting room in Naples.
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In the video, Rosario Lamonica walks around filming the overflowing ward in shock.
During the brief clip, he can be heard saying: "This man is dead, this is Cardarelli Hospital. Here we are, the emergency department."
Pointing his camera to one patient, he says: "This woman in her own piss and excrement, we don't know if she's dead or alive.
"The woman over there, we know nothing."
Mr Lamonica said he shot the footage so that people could know what was going on.
He told Italian press agency ANSA: "When I asked for help, nobody listened to me, there were also those who told me 'mind your own business."
The 30-year-old had been in the hospital for two days after testing positive for Covid-19 and experiencing breathing problems.
He added: "That person (the dead man) was with me in the room, together with other old men.
'OUT OF CONTROL'
Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio, who comes from the region, said today: "The situation in Naples and in many areas of Campania is out of control … the central government needs to intervene because there is no time left."
Of the video, Mr Di Maio wrote on Facebook: "The video of the patient found dead in the bathroom of Cardarelli Hospital is shocking.
"The life and right to health of every single citizen are priorities that must be protected above all else. If the local authorities fail to do so, the State must do it.
"I have kept silent until now out of respect for all institutions but now we must intervene immediately especially in the south, which risks collapsing."
Health officials said they were investigating the death, but Mr Di Maio said this was just the latest shocking incident he had heard about in recent days from Campania.
Further south, on the island of Sicily, the mayor of Palermo warned on Monday his region faced an "inevitable massacre" as infections rose there.
Meanwhile, Carlo Palermo, head of the ANAAO-ASSOMED doctors' union, told Reuters: "The north has always had a well-equipped health system spread out across the territory.
"The situation there might not be optimal, but the south by comparison is a wasteland."
Italy recorded another 636 deaths on Thursday and 37,978 new cases.
The total number of cases roared past the one million mark – with half of those infections emerging in just the last 19 days.
There have been a total of 43,589 deaths – the sixth highest in the world.
Hospitals across the country have struggled to manage the surging figures, but the poorer south has appeared particularly ill-equipped to cope.
In Naples, footage shows patients being given oxygen and placed on drips through their car windows as they wait for hours to be admitted to hospital.
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