Death at home: the unseen toll of Italy's coronavirus crisis

FILE PHOTO: A priest blesses the coffin of a woman who died from coronavirus disease (COVID-19) at her funeral, as Italy struggles to contain the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Seriate, Italy March 28, 2020. REUTERS/Flavio Lo Scalzo

MILAN (Reuters) - It took Silvia Bertuletti 11 days of frantic phone calls to persuade a doctor to visit her 78-year-old father Alessandro, who was gripped by fever and struggling for breath.

When an on-call physician did go to her house near Bergamo, at the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak in northern Italy, on the evening of March 18, it was too late.