At the height of the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic last year, the Italian province of Bergamo had to call in military trucks to haul away hundreds of coffins because the city’s crematoriums were already over capacity. Among the first victims of the virus were general practitioners who, as a result of decades of health care cuts and the closure of small provincial hospitals, had become many Italians’ sole recourse for care.

Face masks weren’t yet mandatory or easily available, not even for doctors’ offices. Many of them would get sick: Since the start of the pandemic, at least 340 doctors have died of complications from the virus, most of them general practitioners. Valeria Leone, whose husband Vincenzo, a doctor, died in March last year aged 65, likened the fate of these doctors to that of Italian soldiers being sent to the Russian front in World War II without shoes. Very few returned.