An Italian doctor based in Ireland whose brother died in Italy after contracting COVID-19 says his brother had "hardly had a day sick in his life".
Giovanni Baldassini is a GP working at the Cork Road Clinic in Mallow, Co Cork.
Three weeks ago, Giovanni's brother Gabriele died in Bergamo - a city in the Italian region of Lombardy, which has been one of the areas hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic - of complications from COVID-19.
Giovanni told Newstalk Breakfast that it was an "unreal experience".
He said: "Gabriele is my oldest brother - he was 69. He was probably the healthiest of all the brothers - he'd hardly had a day sick in his life.
"We joked about COVID-19, and we were chatting about the hysteria that was arising... but then within a few days he actually contracted it, and it wasn't much of a joke any more.
"He really got a dose of it - he was the sickest he had been in his whole life. His words were like 'I feel like an alien has taken over my body'."
Giovanni said Gabriele wouldn't eat or drink - even saying he wished he felt hungry again.
Giovanni explained: "He was a really good candidate for pulling through.
"We thought he'd turned a corner... he started eating... [But] that night he took a turn for the worse."
Gabriele was "lucky" to get a bed in a local hospital, amid the intense pressure on hospitals in Bergamo during the peak of the coronavirus crisis there.
Giovanni explained: "The alternative would have been to have him die in front of his wife on her own.
"He was getting increasingly confused, and there was only one outcome... you couldn't put his wife through that experience."
Giovanni said the experience was 'deeply traumatic' for everyone involved.
From his own experience as a GP, Giovanni said the Irish had "really stepped up to the plate" during the current crisis.
He suggested it has been because of the actions of the community and health service that we've seen a "much less dramatic impact" here than was seen in Italy.
