• Coronavirus: Health rapid tests do not work and China warns that they were purchased from a company without a license
  • Covid-19. The Government hired worthless tests for 17.1 million and paid 7 to the intermediary Inter Pharma
  • Defective tests: The Government paid each unit more than double

José Antonio GL's last wish has been to undertake a legal fight against those responsible for managing the coronavirus health crisis for catching his imminent death. So imminent that the complaint was filed by his lawyer this past Wednesday at 6:00 p.m., and a few hours later, this Thursday at 11 a.m., José Antonio died at his home in Barcelona.

But the complaint will not end here yet, because he, knowing how little time he had left, has left the legacy in the form of an order to his widow and two daughters to continue with the legal actions. For him and for all those who have left.

A little over a month ago the time trial started and everything changed for this man. He was already ill, and had to go to the hospital on March 13 for a medical test. On March 20, after feeling unwell, he returned to the same center, the SSR Hestia Hospital, in Barcelona, ​​and already had to stay. While admitted, according to the complaint, he was infected with Covid-19.

It is not known whether he was infected by a patient or perhaps by hospital personnel who had contracted him working there. The fact is that a few weeks later they diagnosed him that his death was a matter of days. He had no chance of saving himself.

For this reason, and presumably after many nights of speculation, on April 15 he decided on the only solution he found: requesting voluntary discharge and leaving to die at home.

This last week of his life must have been distressing. He contacted attorney Javier Díaz Aparicio, who has drafted the complaint in record time to present it before the inevitable happened. José Antonio had no chance of signing any power of attorney before a notary, because no notary wanted to go to his house to have that power signed: they were afraid of getting coronavirus.

Two things

Foreseeing all these avatars, José Antonio left two things tied. The first, that his wife led the complaint. The second, that his two daughters continue with the judicial fight when he was no longer there. In a manuscript he left all the instructions.

The brief has been filed with the Magistrate's Courts in Madrid for the jurisdiction to be resolved later. It is directed against the main managers of the crisis management and also against the intermediary company in the purchase of defective tests to detect the disease.

The letter denounces the director of the Center for Coordination of Health Emergencies, Fernando Simón; María Jesús Lamas, director of the Spanish Medicines Agency; Interpharma, the intermediary company; or to the general director of public health, Pilar Aparicio, among others. The main crime reported in the complaint is a crime against public health for the purchase, distribution and use of these defective tests.

The background explains all the regulations surrounding the acquisition of medicines, who is responsible for ensuring them, etc., to conclude that there are indications of the commission of a crime against public health during the management of this health crisis. The reason is that the distribution of drugs that do not work or that do not serve their purpose in itself could already be an accomplished crime.

"That the tests were not carried out on time and some gave erroneous results [...] meant, if not an impairment of physical integrity and individual health, it did pose a risk to collective security, since the transmission of virus, but increased, " explains the complaint. It could be asked whether the specific case of José Antonio was due to negligence due to late detection due to the use of these tests.

The abstract danger is enough

However, the complaint does not enter into that, but into something more far-reaching, as Díaz Aparicio explains: "The crime against public health is a crime of abstract danger, it does not need a specific victim. It is consumed with the generation of the health risk . It is not necessary to relate the use of these tests to any death of a patient. What is brought to court is the credibility of the health system and those who risk the health of all. To draw a parallel, it is as with the drug: it is not necessary that the trafficker has sold it or that any of its buyers has died of an overdose for the crime against public health to have been consummated. It is enough that the trafficker has it at his disposal. "

In the last days of his life, José Antonio has had the obsession that although he will no longer be there to see him, the authorities will be held responsible for his negligence in the purchase and distribution of these analytical tests. "For him and for all the dead of the pandemic, so that he does not forget," explains his lawyer.

It must be remembered that the tests were purchased from a Chinese company called Bioeasy with the intermediation of Interpharma, and everything was centralized through government purchases regulated in the state of alarm regulations. As this newspaper already published, the Chinese company did not yet have an export license to Spain, according to the authorities of the People's Republic.

In addition, the Government of Spain has paid more than double the price for these tests, at an average of 26 per unit, as this newspaper revealed yesterday.

When the first batch, comprising approximately 35% of the 700,000 tests commissioned from Interpharma, was distributed in the large hospitals and centers where they were being tested, it was concluded that they were not effective because they had too high a margin of error. Finally, the Ministry of Health itself had to admit that they were not working and demanded the return of the money and the withdrawal of the product.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • Barcelona
  • Spain
  • Madrid

Coronavirus The autonomies calculate that the number of deaths from coronavirus is double the official

CataloniaThe Catalan toilets speak before the increase in cases: "We have four days left for the collapse"

Coronavirus Government excludes confirmed symptom-free cases from its daily balance on coronavirus