The COVID-19 pandemic is a rapidly evolving situation that requires a system orientation to diagnosis, management and post-acute care to keep clinicians, patients, families and communities safe. This set of recommendations is anchored on a human factors approach to provide overarching direction to design systems and approaches to respond to the virus. The recommendations focus on team communication and organizational culture; the diagnostic process; patient and family engagement to reduce spread; hospital, pediatric, and maternity processes and treatments; triage decision ethics; discharge communications; home isolation; psychological safety of staff and patients, and; outcome measures. An appendix covers drug interactions and adverse effects for medications used to treat this patient population. The freely-available full text document will be updated appropriately as Italy continues to respond, learn and amend its approach during the outbreak.