Military flies Italian and French patients to Germany for treatment

Pictures show the specialist equipment on board the flights.

Germany is set to treat coronavirus patients who are being flown in from nearby European nations that have been worse hit by the pandemic.

The country’s military are flying Covid-19-positive patients in from France and Italy in an effort to help countries’ whose health services are struggling to cope with the crisis.

An air force plane landed in Bergamo, northern Italy, early this morning and is due to return to Cologne, west Germany with six Italian patients, who will be treated at various hospitals in the region. Newly-released images have shown the remarkable equipment on board the plane – which is an Airbus A-310 ‘Medivac’.

Several German state governments have offered to take in patients from Italy and some have already arrived.

It is unclear why the six patients from Italy were chosen for treatment in Germany.

Germany has a large number of coronavirus cases but a relatively low death rate compared with Italy’s and its health system has so far coped comparatively well with the crisis.

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Nearby Italy, meanwhile, has been battered by the crisis, recording the most deaths of any country worldwide.

Yesterday, the nation saw its death toll jump by nearly 1,000 to 9,134. The number of positive cases was approaching 90,000 according to the same figures.

By contrast, Germany has recorded more than 50,000 cases, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University, but only 351 deaths.

The country has also taken in some patients from hard-hit eastern France, with an evacuation taking place from Metz to Essen today.

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