(20 Mar 2021) FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: 4316549

One year ago, Italy was living one of the most haunting moments of the pandemic: when Bergamo's death toll reached such heights that an army convoy had to transport coffins because its cemeteries and crematoriums were full.
The anniversary on Thursday, March 18, came as much of Italy - including Bergamo - is under a new lockdown, with schools, shops and restaurants shuttered, amid a new surge of infections blamed on coronavirus variants.
In the COVID ICU at the northern city's Hospital Giovanni XXIII many patients are still between life and death, being intubated, monitored, and poked as they struggle with the virus.
And this comes as Italy's vaccination campaign has slowed down further because of the temporary suspension of AstraZeneca shots.
"It creates fear, at the end of a year in which there has already been a whole lot of fear," the Director of Intensive care at the hospital Luca Lorini told the AP.
More than a dozen nations around the world had suspended their use of the AstraZeneca vaccine over the past week following reports of clots in a few dozen of the millions of people across Europe who have gotten the shot.
Lorini said all vaccines had complications but the figures showed the advantages of the vaccine outweighed the disadvantages.
"The problem we have is in balancing the advantage of vaccinating a million people in two days with having five complications and not administer the vaccines, resulting in 500 deaths," he said.
Meanwhile at the Hospital Giovanni XXIII, the situation seems under control compared to last year.
According to Lorini, on the same day last year the hospital tended to 100 COVID patients in the ICU and 500 more in COVID wards.
On Thursday only 48 COVID patients were in the ICU and 140 in the other COVID wards.
But the pandemic is far from over and cases are expected to rise once more towards the end of the month according to Lorini.
Italy's official toll stands at more than 103,000 — the sixth highest in the world and the second highest in Europe after Britain — with hundreds more dying every day.

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