Julio Algañaraz
10/07/2020 - 10:37
Clarín.com
World
Argentine
Ricardo Merlo
, 58 years old, leader of MAIE, the main movement of Italians abroad and Italian Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, suffered the contagion of the coronavirus and in turn infected his wife Gisela and daughter Nina.
"It was a driver from the ministry who was
feverish for two days
until he told what happened to him, the one that Covid_19 happened to me," he told
Clarín
from his home where he remains in quarantine.
The contagion of Merlo and another parliamentarian created a
difficult problem
in the Italian Parliament, where on Tuesday the government could not vote on the decree that prolongs the national emergency due to the pandemic until the end of January and establishes the mandatory use of chinstraps. also in spaces open to all inhabitants in the national territory.
The opposition
celebrated
the government's stumble
with gestures and some shouts
of football style.
It happened that the parliamentarians of the Foreign Relations committee, in whose sessions Merlo and other groups of deputies and senators participate, had to be placed in preventive quarantine.
Ricardo Merlo, when he was reconfirmed Vice Minister of Foreign Relations in the Chigi Palace.
Photo: Victor Sokolowicz
This Wednesday those absent due to the preventive quarantines were declared "on mission" and the important vote as the pandemic worsens in Italy
could be approved.
Merlo was with the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, a little over a week ago, and saw the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Luigi Di Maio, twice.
"In the meetings we kept
all the security measures
and I am happy that there were no problems," he said.
The Italian-Argentine senator was sent to the prestigious
Gemelli Hospital
in Rome, of the Catholic University, (in which Pope Saint John Paul II was operated several times, who jokingly considered it "my second home").
Look also
Coronavirus in the World: photos of life during the Covid-19 pandemic
There, "I saw the medical quality that has made Gemelli so famous," said Merlo.
"They did all kinds of special tests and x-rays to check the state of my lungs, which is where the virus activity is concentrated."
Merlo consulted the vice president of the MAIE, the movement he founded for Italians abroad, the
doctor Claudio Zin
"who is also a journalist and has collected precious information about the coronavirus, and gave me very good advice."
The Gemelli doctors
sent
the Italian-Argentine vice chancellor
back home
, "because they verified that there are still no traces of virus activity and therefore I must be attentive to the news," Merlo explained.
The contagion of her daughter Nina determined the closure for
two weeks
of her classmates, who must, like her, comply with a two-week quarantine.
“It is remarkable how well organized the reopening of schools and universities has been since September 14.
The day after the beginning of the quarantine of my daughter and her companions, the distance lessons began to work, which reaches them all through the Internet ”.
Gisela, Merlo's wife, is also in good condition and under
strict medical
supervision, serving her own quarantine.
The mayor of Rome Virginia Raggi isolated because her chief of staff tested positive for coronavirus.
In this photo with Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte.
Photo: Victor Sokolowicz
Merlo was invited to participate this Wednesday in the presentation of the exhibition "Quarantine Italy, seen by the foreign press" by the mayor of Rome Virginia Raggi.
The mayor joined those absent because she also had to confine herself at home after her chief of staff,
Stefano Castiglioni
, was declared infected with the coronavirus.
Raggi and Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte visited the headquarters of the Foreign Press a few days ago and were able to admire the images of Italians who lived through quarantine during the first months, which were the worst, of the pandemic.
The mayor of Virginia Raggi with Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte during the inauguration of a photographic exhibition on the covid.
Photo: Victor Sokolowicz
The photos were taken by photographers from the so-called Stampa Estera.
Among the two curators of the exhibition is
Victor Sokolowicz
, from
Clarín.
Rome, correspondent
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Ricardo Merlo, Vice Chancellor of Italy: "There is a new Marshall Plan in Europe"