Warning: This is a difficult watch but one that could help save lives.
The world is in the grip of the Covid-19 coronavirus emergency.
In Ireland,
191 new cases were confirmed on Thursday evening by the Department of Health. A third death associated with the virus was announced in tandem.
At the time of writing on Friday morning, there are a a total of 634 confirmed cases of Covid-19 on the island of Ireland.
Speaking in unflinching terms on
RTÉ Prime Time on Thursday, Dr Catherine Motherway, intensive care physician at University Hospital Limerick, outlined the challenge facing the entire country, noting that people need to treat one another as "pariahs" in a bid to handle the crisis.
Dr Motherway pointed to Italy, where the number of related deaths (3,405) has surpassed that of China (3,132) as of this week.
"There is seriously no healthcare service that could cope with what Italy has just gone through or indeed Wuhan in China," Motherway underlined.
"We have a limited amount of beds and we have been working very hard in the past number of weeks to try and increase the capacity."
Shining a light on the situation in Italy, a new report by Sky News presents harrowing scenes of critically ill patients at the centre of the emergency in Bergamo.
"They're fighting a war here and they're losing," the report by journalist Stuart Ramsay begins.
The footage details emergency wards lined with patients gasping for air as staff struggle to keep up with the task in front of them.
"Nobody expected this. Nobody thought they'd be treating so many so quickly. And it's not like flu. It is chronic pneumonia and it is killing hundreds each day," notes the report.
The doctors onscreen say that Covid-19 is like nothing that they have ever dealt with before, with the scene eventually likened to "the apocalypse".
You can watch the report - which contains footage that some may find disturbing - in full below.
Clip via Sky News
