Italian COVID-19 patient warns the world about the outbreak

This is Gianni Zampino

“Hello everyone. Excuse the mask, but at the moment I can’t speak without it. I want to make this video because too many people underestimate this damned coronavirus. Personally, it has turned my life upside down over the last ten days.”

His story has shaken Italy

This account shared by an Italian man on social media, has shaken Italy. “Unfortunately, this virus has entered my body and has killed the most precious person in my life, my father. I, like many, underestimated this coronavirus. I thought it was a political ploy, a military ploy, a joke, and many other things.”, he shared. Gianni Zampino has agreed to tell his story on Brut to share his experience, and his remorse. He continued, “About a month ago, I started to get a fever, a dry cough. I didn’t really stay at home because I am the manager of a company that makes electric scooters and I only stayed at home a very little bit because I didn’t want to leave my teams. I thought it would be alright.”

Gianni made several round trips between Turin and Milan. That’s probably where he contracted coronavirus

“And then, I lived peacefully for a month. Until the head office in Milan called me and I had to go and spend a day there. I went there, everything was normal, I didn’t stop anywhere before arriving in Milan. It takes an hour to get there. I spent the day surrounded by my colleagues. On return, when I arrived home, around 8 p.m., I started to have chills… Saturday morning, when I got up, I felt unwell, and I passed out. I didn’t want to eat. And then, I started to have breathing difficulties, a high fever above 100.4°F, I was sweating a lot, and I had a dry cough that stopped me from sleeping.” When his brother got to the house and saw him in such a bad state, he immediately called the ambulance. After being in the hospital for ten days at this point, he can’t stress enough how much of a nightmare his situation has been.

Without knowing it, Gianni most probably contaminated his 76-year-old father

“In terms of my dad, I’m going to tell you the truth. I have a brother. I told him he absolutely shouldn’t tell me because deep down, I knew that if he tested positive for COVID-19, with his dialysis, he wouldn’t survive. So I did what I could to not find anything out, and one day, a message of condolences arrived for me. And then, I understood straight away. My dad and I, we had a wonderful relationship. It has been a year and a half that I lived with him. Since the death of my mother, I have looked after him. The hardest thing is to not have been able to help him at the end, to not have been able to go to his funeral, to not have been able to hold him in my arms. It’s horrible.”

Today, Gianni is urging all Europeans to respect the rules of confinement

“Before, what mattered most to me was to have fun. I was oblivious, and now, I realize that I have done nothing with my life, everything is meaningless. When events like this happen, you realize that.” Overall, he wants people to understand how important it is to help one another and how serious this virus is.

Brut.