Other than taking the situation under control. Last February 27, when the new coronavirus epidemic was still to begin to spread across the country, Attilio Fontana he showed up in a live Facebook with his face covered in a mask. Many accused him of magnifying a ridiculous, almost non-existent problem. In reality, the governor of the Lombardy Region had understood before many others the gravity of a situation that would soon drag Italy into a nightmare.
About masks, which many controversies have attracted in recent days regarding the “competing powers”In the management between government and regions, during an interview with the newspaper The truthFontana clarified a couple of concepts: “Arcuri (Domenico Arcuri, Coronavirus emergency commissioner ed.) forget that competing powers are on ordinary management. Otherwise there would be no reason to have appointed an emergency commissioner, let us not try to confuse the Constitution. As for the rest, they say to me for example that 900 thousand masks bought by us arrived in Italy, seized by the Civil Protection and then given to the Region as if it were a gift. But they were already ours“.
Bergamo missed red zone
Fontana then retraces the chaotic days when the government was thinking about how (and when) to implement the restrictions. When a dry no came from Rome to the closure of the municipalities of Bergamasca, the feeling was that the executive wanted the red area for the whole region. “The measure went in that direction – reminds the governor – It had been talked about for a long time, our technicians had discussed it with those of Palazzo Chigi, they too considered the request valid, also because on Codogno the red zone was giving very positive results. There was a yes-no, yes-no for two or three days, then it was decided for the orange zone, i.e. protected, throughout Lombardy. No red zone on Bergamo“.
About the red zone up Bergamo, Fontana was convinced that “that evening the red zone would have been arranged because I received calls from the territory, there were many soldiers who were staying in the hotels around there, so I was practically convinced that there would be the provision“. In the end none of this happened: “Someone gave different provisions“.
The buffers and autonomy of the regions
Going back to the masks, the governor shares the anger of general practitioners, especially those from Bergamo, who run out of protective devices: “The masks had to be provided by the Civil Protection and therefore by the government and therefore by the State“. Sui swabs the speech is more complex than you can imagine: “Even if we managed to make seven thousand a day instead of five thousand, they would not be significant to set the epidemiological discourse. Moreover, the swab is valid for one day only. It would make sense if I could keep an entire population under control, if I could make a million tampons every day“.
Finally Fontana launches the last hit in Rome: “If we had approached this emergency with greater autonomy, first of all we would have had more doctors and nurses and we would not have forced our staff to be in trouble because of too intense work“.
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