APTOPIX Virus Outbreak Italy’s Heroes Photo Gallery

A combo of portraits of Italian doctors and nurses taken during a break or at the end of their shifts in Rome, Bergamo and Brescia, Italy, Friday, March 27, 2020. The intensive care doctors and nurses on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic in Italy are often almost unrecognizable behind their masks, scrubs, gloves and hairnets their only barrier to contagion. Associated Press photographers fanned out on Friday to photograph them during rare breaks from hospital intensive care units in the Lombardy region cities of Bergamo and Brescia, and in Rome. In each case, doctors, nurses and paramedics posed in front of forest green surgical drapes, the bland backdrop of their sterile wards. (AP Photo/Domenico Stinellis, Antonio Calanni, Luca Bruno)