Emergency rooms in Italy’s hospitals are facing a “crisis”, doctors warned, as ever-increasing numbers of people in Italy are becoming infected with Covid and the winter flu virus.

Since Sunday, two patients in the northern city of Vicenza, a 55-year-old and 47-year-old man, are reported to have died of the H1N1 virus, a seasonal flu that’s been circulating since 2009.

A further three patients also suffering from the virus in the same Vicenza hospital, San Bortolo, were reportedly in a critical condition as of Wednesday afternoon.

Matteo Bassetti, director of infectious diseases at the San Martino hospital in Genoa, blamed the outbreak on the authorities’ failure to conduct an effective seasonal vaccine campaign.

“The vaccination campaign was disastrous and these are the results,” he told journalists.

Italy’s Federation of Oncologists, Cardiologists and Hematologists, Foce, on Wednesday published an appeal to government to address the growing crisis.

“For several weeks we have been witnessing the phenomenon of worsening chaos in our emergency systems. The emergency rooms are in a nightmare situation and the hospital wards are ‘under siege’,” the federation’s board wrote in a statement.

“It is clear that what was said at the end of July is not true, that is, that the Covid pandemic “had ended in terms of numbers”. The virus never disappeared,” they added.

“The current very acute emergency room crisis is therefore also due to the lackluster and inadequate influenza vaccination campaign, which has had much lower coverage than in previous years.”

Covid booster vaccines have been available to at-risk categories since October in most Italian regions, and to the general public since early December, but a lack of publicity is being blamed for the fact that many doctors, as well as patients, were unaware that the vaccine was available.

Vicenza’s local health authority has urged residents to get vaccinated as soon as possible and encouraged the use of masks in the event of an infection.

Spain on Monday reinstated a requirement to wear masks in hospitals as the country faced a major flu outbreak and Covid cases surged.