Palermo, Biagio Conte’s missions declared “red zones”: The police oversee the reception center

The four structures of Biagio Conte’s “Mission Hope and Charity”, in Palermo, now become the red zone “to counter the spread of Coronavirus. This was established by the president of the Sicilian Region Nello Musumeci, with his own ordinance, after over thirty positive cases ascertained among the guests of the center.

The decision was adopted after a summit with the councilor for health Ruggero Razza and the director general of the Palermo ASP Daniela Faraoni, who examined the progress of the infection and the dangerous promiscuity within the structures. To accentuate the critical situation was the refusal of almost all the subjects hosted to be taken to the Covid-Hotel San Paolo for mandatory quarantine. In the centers, now, only health and social-health workers and personnel involved in assisting activities relating to the emergency will be able to enter and exit. To ensure the effectiveness of the Musumeci ordinance, adopted pursuant to Article 3 of Legislative Decree 25 March 2020 n.19, the police must be outside the structures.

In the four Mission Centers, technical groups from the Health Authority of the Region were already sent yesterday to verify full compliance with the prevention measures and four Usca teams to subject the more than seven hundred guests to a rapid swab.

Dozens of guests of Biagio Conte’s mission of hope and charity in via Decollati have gathered at the entrance this morning and ask to leave. But you can’t. On the spot the police and the ASP doctors who are continuing to carry out swabs. The situation is critical. Of the 50 swabs whose results came, 37 were positive. And only 3 migrants agreed to be transferred to the San Paolo hotel. The others refuse.

–

The Mission contacted the mediators of Doctors Without Borders to try to explain to the guests the reasons why it is no longer possible to leave the mission, Don Pino at the entrance tries to calm the spirits, but the guests are many. In all 600, most of foreign origin. This morning a summit was convened in the prefecture on the case of the mission, the mayor Leoluca Orlando is in contact with the national government to take urgent decisions.

The guests of the mission ask to be able to leave as soon as possible because they want to go back to work: the fear is of losing what little income they have, that is, little ones in black.

Mayor Orlando wrote to Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte warning him that in the mission “the situation is particularly serious with a positive rate of over 60 percent” and “aggravated by the difficult if not impossible distance”. In short, the mission risks “causing a situation of serious health risk” for which Orlando considers it necessary “to intervene by the national government in order to avoid the serious risk mentioned”.

— .