Case documents related to a Bergamo
probe into the handling of the early stages of the COVID-19
pandemic in 2020 show that then-health minister Roberto Speranza
said there had been no "instructions manual" for handling an
unknown virus.
"We always had the compass, and it led us to defend people's
health first and foremost," Speranza told investigators in
January 2021.
"What we didn't have was the instruction manual on how to cope
with an unknown virus."
Speranza is among 19 people under investigation, along with
ex-premier Giuseppe Conte and Lombardy Governor Attilio Fontana,
over the failure to make Nembro and Alzano Lombardo red zones
early in 2020 as the authorities had done in other contagion
hotspots in the province of Lodi.
A Bergamo prosecutor has said that over 4,000 COVID-19 deaths
could have been saved by declaring these towns red zones.
Investigators are also reportedly looking into the failure to
implement Italy's existing pandemic plan, dated 2006.
"The plan was outdated and not built specifically on a
coronavirus but on a flu virus," Speranza says in the case
documents from 2021.
Implementation of the plan "is the responsibility of the
director general" of Preventive Healthcare at the health
ministry, he added.
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