By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
For two FIBA referees, Silvia Marziali and Guido Giovannetti, the coronavirus crisis in their homecountry, Italy, has taken them off the basketball court, with all league play having ceased in the country a month ago. Both have instead turned their full attention to their main occupation as doctors to help in the fight against the coronavirus.
“Now the situation is very tough and changing every day,” said Giovannetti on fiba.basketball, a FIBA referee since 2017. “The government is always asking for more help from doctors.
“In my personal case, I’m working in the Bari hospital and previously, I was in the cardiology department but now, I’ve been moved into a different department for COVID-19 patients.
“The real problem is we don’t know when it will end because in some parts of Italy, like Lombardy, Milan, maybe the situation is already coming to the peak, while our fear is that in the south, the situation is not decreasing and maybe the people that have moved from the north to the south have spread it. We just don’t know, but numbers suggest we are increasing.”
Marziali is based in Rome, where she studied medicine and wrote her thesis on cardiology.
“When you become a doctor, you make a promise,” she said, “and you honor it every time you work and especially when there is an emergency. You make an oath to help others.”