This aircraft was used to bring German patients suffering from COVID-19 out of Italy and home for care.

Special interior setup to transfer COVID-19 patients from Italy to Germany (x-post from /r/italy) from r/aviation

The aircraft is a 30 year old, ex-Lufthansa Airbus A310 belonging to the German Air Force with “the medevac kit installed.”

This one is based out of Cologne-Bonn Airport and has 6 intensive care stations next to 38 normal stretchers.

It is used regularly for medevac missions for wounded soldiers or German citizens involved in bigger accidents abroad. It was also used to transport 15 Germans out of Madeira last year when a bus accident happened there.

There are over 90,000 confirmed positives of the novel corona in Italy, and more than 10,000 have died so far. Italy’s population skews older, the health care system has been overwhelmed, but those two factors alone may not fully explain the high mortality. Germany on the other hand has two-thirds as many confirmed cases but so far fewer than 500 deaths. This is one of the more underexplained phenomenon of the worldwide pandemic, but it clearly seems more desirable to be treated in Germany than in Italy right now.