A regional lawmaker in Berlin is proposing that a 1,000-bed field hospital being built in the German capital should be used to treat coronavirus patients from Italy.
Catherina Pieroth-Manelli told public broadcaster rbb Wednesday that the move would send a signal of solidarity to Italy, which has been hardest-hit in Europe by the pandemic, The Associated Press reports.
Pieroth-Manelli, a member of the Greens that are part of a three-party governing coalition in Berlin state, said the offer would depend on how the number of infections develops in Germany.
Even without the field hospital, which will be completed at the end of the month, only about a quarter of the existing hospital beds set a side for COVID-19 patients in Berlin are currently in use. Germany currently has about 50,000 active cases, about 1,300 of them in Berlin.
Germany has already taken in more than 200 patients from other European countries, including Italy, France, and the Netherlands.
