Italian doctors celebrated one small victory in their battle against the coronavirus after a 38-year-old man was moved out of intensive care for the first time since he tested positive Feb. 21 and opened Italy’s health care crisis as Patient No. 1.

But in the rest of hard-hit northern Italy, the virus’ spread was growing so exponentially that doctors were making comparisons to war-time triage medics deciding who lives, who dies and who gets access to the limited number of ICU beds. “It’s a reasoning that our colleagues make," Dr. Guido Giustetto, head of the association of doctors in northern Piedmont, said Monday.