COVID-19 is killing Italy’s doctors. The U.S. could be next.

Natali, who was the head of the region’s Federation of General Practitioners, is the fourth doctor to die in the original red zone, which has been under lockdown since Feb. 23. Just days before he went into intensive care, he gave a radio interview in which he complained that testing was taking too long and that there were many cases that family doctors were taking care of on a house call basis without full protection, exposing them to the virus…

At least 2,629 health care workers—roughly 8.3 percent of all cases in Italy—have contracted COVID-19 from working with inadequate equipment or being exposed to asymptomatic carriers, according to the latest results from the Ministry of Health.

In the province of Bergamo alone, another of the most hard-hit regions, 50 doctors have been infected and one has died. Giulio Gallera, the head of the Lombardy Health and Welfare administration, where Bergamo is located, said that the number of infected health workers is 12 percent of all cases in the second most hard hit northern region near where the outbreak began. “If we continue in this way we risk not only that there will not be enough doctors to assist everyone, but also that the same health professionals will become, despite themselves, a vehicle for infection,” Gallera said.