The Christian charity Samaritan's Purse is packing up its pop-up medical tents in Cremona this week as Italy starts to recover from the peak of coronavirus.
From Monday, Italy will start to re-open shops and cafes, with travel resuming from 3rd June.
The north of the country has been worst affected, leading to Samaritan's Purse setting up tents in Cremona hospital car park with volunteer medical workers, as they also did in New York city.
The field hospital in northern Italy near Milan provided 68 beds and specialised as a respiratory care unit as Cremona Hospital became overwhelmed.
Since beginning operations on 20th March, they treated more than 300 patients and filled the intensive care unit within the first 24 hours.
UK-based nurse Ali who was part of the team on the ground said: "Our last patient left at 3.00pm on Thursday amid cheers, tears and rejoicing. Staff from the hospital came across on Friday morning along with the Mayor and senior managers to express their thanks to us. We were even visited by the local football team who gave us all scarves. As the town has made us honorary citizens it seems appropriate that we now have scarves from the local football team!"
UK director of Samaritan's Purse, Darren Tosh, told Premier their faith was their motivation: "We were explicitly Christian, we love being able to actually share why we do what we do. For patients that were wanting prayer, our team of nurses and doctors and respiratory therapists take the time just to pray with them. In most cases, it was the only opportunity for patients that were unable to get over the disease to actually have someone like family there."
Samaritan's Purse had airlifted the emergency hospital along with 38 tons of additional medical supplies into the region.
One patient said: "Thank you so much to the nurses because they give me the strength to overcome this disease, to overcome this pain and to overcome this awful situation."
Darren Tosh added that they were looking ahead to where they can help next: "For those who have the ability to serve overseas, this is not the end of coronavirus. We're looking at where else there these hospitals could be going."
