Sant'Anna: 16 babies in 24 hours in the October 7 to 8 birth peak
Sixteen births in a single day at the Sant'Anna hospital birth unit, against an average of five or six deliveries. The newborns included a pair of twins and ten boys. Births since January total 1,345, up 48 on the same period of 2025.
Translated from the Italian original. Leggi in italiano
Sixteen babies in twenty-four hours. That is the peak recorded by the birth unit of the Sant'Anna hospital between October 7 and 8, a figure that ASST Lariana published on Monday, October 12, calling it an exceptional peak for the Como hospital. The unit's ordinary average is five or six deliveries a day: on that day deliveries were almost three times the usual number, in a sequence that kept the entire delivery block team working without pause.
The sixteen newborns included a pair of twins and a clear male majority, with ten boys out of sixteen. According to ASST, the situation was handled in total safety thanks to the teamwork of the unit's different teams: the day ended with the health authority thanking its staff and congratulating the families.
An operating theatre turned into a delivery room
To absorb the peak, the hospital quickly reorganised the spaces of the delivery block. One of its two operating theatres was temporarily converted into a delivery room, while the other remained constantly free and staffed for any emergency intervention, with the surgical team and the anaesthetist ready to act at any moment. The explanation comes from Paolo Beretta, director of the Maternal and Child Department and head of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, who described the day as a stress test for the unit.
Managing the peak involved gynaecologists, midwives, neonatologists, anaesthetists and nursing staff working together. The keyword indicated by the unit's management is organisational flexibility: the ability of the structure to reorganise rapidly to guarantee maximum safety for mothers and newborns even when activity volumes suddenly rise.
1,345 births since January, 48 more than in 2025
The daily record fits a generally rising trend. Since the start of the year, Sant'Anna has already counted 1,345 births, an increase of 48 newborns compared with the same period of 2025. The figure confirms the weight of the Como birth unit for families in the area.
Sant'Anna, based in San Fermo della Battaglia on Via Ravona, is the main hospital of the Como province and the reference facility of ASST Lariana. The October peak also shows the other side of growth: when births bunch together, a hospital needs spaces that can be converted within hours and staff able to sustain exceptional shifts without lowering safety standards.
