Italian hospitals are reportedly receiving new coronavirus patients every 5 minutes as facilities exceed capacity

Italian hospitals are reportedly receiving new coronavirus patients every five minutes, according to ABC News.

What are the details?

The outlet reported that the county is still two weeks away from hitting the peak of the coronavirus illness projection.

Dr. Massimo Galli, head of infectious diseases at Sacco Hospital in Milan, Italy, said that the hospitals are terribly overcrowded. "I think patients will increase for another week or two," he admitted. "We are getting close to not being able to accept new patients. There is a complete saturation of beds."

He added that other countries — such as the United States — should be vigilant in practicing social distancing and nipping diagnoses in the bud.

"This is a really serious infection," he added. " I don't want to contemplate Africa. In this situation, we are forever unprepared. It is impossible to have enough beds."

"Everybody should be extremely aware," Galli noted. "Our experience is a terrible one."

He told the Financial Times that he isn't sure how long the "health system can cope."

"Franky, I don't know for how long the health system can cope, I don't even want to think about how it could end," he said. "We are holding up, but other hospitals are much worse off than us and it is a fact that we will come increasingly under pressure in the coming days."

On Friday, the Daily Mail reported that the country's death toll rose from 189 to 1,016 on Thursday in just 24 hours.

COVID-19 has infected more than 15,000 people in Italy and has killed at least 1,000 at the time of this writing.

What else?

On Wednesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told Congress that the "worst is yet to come."

"We will see more cases and things will get worse than they are right now," Fauci said.