On the one hand 2,099 pages made up of documents, stories, reconstructions. On the other, about thirty sheets of legal deductions drawn up by the Avvocatura dello Stato. These are the two folders that the judge of the Civil Court of Rome found himself on his desk yesterday morning and that he will have to evaluate before issuing a sentence with significant political implications. We are talking about the civil suit filed by the families of the Covid victims, who have relied on a pool of lawyers, led by Consuelo Locati, to obtain compensation for the death of their loved ones. The value of the compensation requested is enormous: 100 million euros.
“We expect answers from the judiciary that politics has not given us,” sighs one of the family members. The aim is to demonstrate that the actions and omissions of the state would have aggravated the death toll. On the dock are Count II, the Ministry of Health and, in part, the Lombardy Region. Five counts of accusation. First: the failure to update the pandemic plan and the failure to apply the one, although obsolete, of 2006. Second: the sending of self-assessments to the WHO “not corresponding” to the level of preparation of the country. Third: a busted “risk communication”. Fourth: the absence of epidemiological surveillance. And fifth: having drawn up a secret plan “in a hurry” when it was too late.
The lawyers are sure: Italy was not ready. He did not know which “infectious disease wards in hospitals” were, how many ICU places and which “could be implemented.” Total darkness also on the “stocks of reagents” and on the available Dpi. The possible scenarios? Not provided. The tracking? Little or nothing, like active surveillance. “The institutions”, we read, “have run for cover to patch up interventions that instead should have been immediately activated.” The State Attorney, however, rejects all charges. And in the defensive act, which Il Giornale was able to see, he espouses the “tsunami theory”: Covid would have been “a completely unusual event”, different from the flu, which took the whole world by surprise. So it wouldn’t be the government’s fault if Italy found itself unprepared. Was the pandemic plan over? There is no evidence that “adjustment” would have made things better. Has the 2006 one remained in the drawer? “It is hard to argue” that if they had used it “the number of deaths would have decreased.” In short: the government would have “activated promptly”. It matters little if the WHO report defined the Italian reaction to the virus as “improvised, chaotic and creative”. “The profuse commitment” by the state bodies, writes the Avvocatura, saves them from any “profile of guilt”.
Now the ball goes to the judge. “We look forward to it,” he told the Giornale Locati, who is not unbalanced on the government’s defensive strategy. “These are generic disputes in which the state essentially says: The accusations must be proven but, in case we have to compensate, let us pay less”.
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