Management of Covid-19 in Italy: Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte to be heard by the courts

Giuseppe Conte will be heard by the courts. According to Italian press agencies, the public prosecutor's office in Bergamo (northern Italy) will hear the head of government as part of an investigation into the management of the Covid-19 epidemic. Italy remains the European country most affected by the pandemic, which killed more than 34,000 people there.

The magistrates, who could go to Rome to hear Giuseppe Conte, also wish to listen to the testimony of the ministers of Health, Roberto Speranza, and of the Interior, Luciana Lamorgese, added these same agencies.

According to the websites of two Italian daily newspapers, Corriere della Sera and Il Sole-24 Ore, the interrogations could start on Wednesday in the Italian capital.

Delay in establishing a "red zone"

The public prosecutor's office in Bergamo, a martyr city in the Lombardy region and the epicenter of the pandemic that struck Italy from early February to May, is conducting several separate investigations related to this tragedy.

The one in which the magistrates wish to hear Giuseppe Conte, and his two ministers, concerns the delays in the establishment of a "red zone" comprising two municipalities in this department, Nembro and Alzano Lombardo, particularly affected by the coronavirus.

The central government and the leaders of Lombardy reject the responsibility for this delay, which had a dramatic impact with the saturation of the health system, the increase in mortality and the spread of the new coronavirus in this region.

Mancata zona rossa ad Alzano e Nembro, la Procura interrogherà Conte, Lamorgese e Speranza https://t.co/MxtBX0cAoE

Responsibility of the central government or the region?

Heard at the end of May before the Bergamo public prosecutor's office, the president of Lombardy, Attilio Fontana, and his regional health official, Giulio Gallera, said that the decision to establish the "red zone" was up to the government in Rome.

To which the Minister of Regional Affairs, Francesco Boccia, had at the time retorted that "even the region could have established it, there is a law allowing it".

The whole question therefore concerns who, from the central government or from Lombardy, should have, between March 3 and 9, set up this "red zone".

This investigation is separate from the class action brought Wednesday morning, also in Bergamo. About fifty complaints were lodged with the local public prosecutor's office by relatives of victims of Covid-19.

FR NW PKG COMPLAINT BERGAMON COVID 18H

The first "red zones" in Italy were established at the end of February by decision of the government in Rome and concerned a dozen municipalities in Lombardy, in particular Codogno, the city of "patient number one".

"Those who made mistakes must pay"

In early March, the epidemic continued to spread, with two larger outbreaks, in the two municipalities of Nembro and Alzano, in the department of Bergamo.

The Technical and Scientific Committee (CTS), which advises the government of Giuseppe Conte, then proposed to impose a "red zone" there, judging that the situation "worsened throughout Lombardy", while the Higher Institute de la santé (ISS) recommended the same measure the next day in these two municipalities.

According to Corriere, the head of government once again met these experts on March 6, to finally choose to proclaim the whole country as a "red zone", by a decree signed on March 7 and entered into force two days later, thus losing one precious time to contain the pandemic.

"After so many lies and shameful attacks, justice is done: those who have made mistakes must pay", welcomed on Wednesday Matteo Salvini, the head of the League (far right), to which the president of the Lombardy, itself severely criticized for its management of the crisis.

With AFP

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