The brother of a woman who died at home after contracting coronavirus had to issue a desperate appeal on social media to persuade Italian authorities to come and collect her body.

Teresa Franzese, 47, lived with her family in the southern city of Naples and started to show the symptoms of coronavirus last week.

Her health deteriorated rapidly and she died on Saturday before the results of a test for the disease was known.

Given the uncertainty, undertakers and even the local hospital refused to pick up the body.

“My sister is dead, in bed. I don’t know what to do. I can’t give her the funeral she deserves because the institutions have abandoned me,” her brother Luca Franzese said in a video posted on Facebook