4148 lives could have been saved if a “red zone” had been set up in Bergamo exactly three years ago. To protect people from Corona. In addition to this amazingly precise number, there is an expert report that is now part of the judicial files that could soon lead to court proceedings: a process about alleged misconduct in dealing with the first phase of the pandemic.
A whole mountain of files has come together. The list of accused includes 17 names, including many celebrities, national and regional politicians in particular. Among them: Italy’s then Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and his Health Minister Roberto Speranza. They are suspected of negligently underestimating risks.
But first to the context. Three years ago, Italy and the whole world looked to Bergamo and the Bergamasca, the hinterland of the Lombard city with its many internationally successful factories. When the first cases of infection became known there, the regional employers’ association rushed to assure the many customers abroad that everything was fine and that the matter was under control. #bergamoisrunning, the campaign ran under this hashtag. Word got around early on that many people were suffering from pneumonia.
A hospital became a major source of contagion for the whole area
The first case of Sars-CoV-2 was discovered on February 23, 2020: in the Alzano hospital in the Val Seriana. The fully occupied clinic was closed immediately that day – and, to everyone’s astonishment, reopened after three hours and some superficial cleaning work. That’s what the local and regional health authorities had decided. Why is still a mystery to this day. The Alzano hospital was to become a major source of contagion for the whole area.
The case of the Val Seriana was also astonishing because a few days earlier, just a little further south, in Codogno, also in Lombardy, after the positive test of a patient in the hospital there, the procedure was completely different – also nationally. A so-called “zona rossa” was set up in Codogno and the surrounding communities: the access roads were guarded by carabinieri, people were no longer allowed to leave their houses – it was the first form of a total lockdown in Europe, decreed by Rome.
Why was Bergamo treated differently? Bergamo only became a “red zone” when the national government put the entire country under a lockdown. On March 8, 2020.
“Bergamo” now became the dramatic cipher of an epidemic that hit Europe after China. It was soon said that Bergamo was the “Wuhan of the West”, the “new epicenter” of Corona. The images of long queues of military trucks, with which the many dead had to be transported from the area to cremation in other cities in the middle of the night because there were no more free spaces in the cemeteries around Bergamo, were burned into people’s minds forever , at least in Italy.
Italy has not yet been able to draw on the experiences of other western countries
The association of victims’ relatives contacted the Bergamo public prosecutor’s office in April 2020. The investigation phase is now complete; an investigating judge must decide whether the material collected is sufficient to bring the suspects to justice. That’s not certain, after all, everyone was overwhelmed at the time. In that phase there was no object lesson on how other democracies dealt with the emergency situation – after all, you were the first.
In addition to Conte and Speranza, the president of the Lombard regional government, Attilio Fontana of the right-wing Lega, and Giulio Gallera, who was responsible for health at the time, are also accused. In addition, all prominent personalities from the scientific task force and civil defense.
When Italians hear their names, they feel transported back to a depressing, frightening time, when every night they hung on the every word of the virologists and doctors who appeared on television. They warned a lot, but they never overdramatized. It is also memorable that the Western government, of all people, which probably took the toughest measures to contain the pandemic, could now be prosecuted for its allegedly negligent handling of the pandemic. Alone, in Bergamo, in Alzano and Nembro, she was too late.
“My goal is,” says prosecutor Antonio Chiappani, “that people find out what happened.” The lawyers for the relatives put it more drastically in their communiqué: “As of today we are rewriting the history of the Bergamasque and Lombard massacre,” it says. “It’s the story of our families, the story of the responsibilities that led to our losses.” To the 4,148 deaths that might have been prevented.