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Carabinieri in protective clothing will be transporting a coffin in Ponte San Pietro, near Bergamo, in March 2020
Photo: Emanuele Cremaschi / Getty Images
Italy is said to have deceived the World Health Organization (WHO) about the status of its pandemic plans - this allegation is made by lawyers who represent families of corona victims in several lawsuits.
The basis for the allegations is a report that the Italian Ministry of Health submitted to the WHO on February 4, 2020, less than three weeks before the first official Covid-19 cases in Italy.
The document is available to SPIEGEL.
Among other things, it states that the Italian pandemic plans are "regularly tested and updated".
The coordination of emergency measures would also be evaluated and revised on a regular basis.
In both areas, Italy therefore classified itself at »Level 5« - the top rating.
A few weeks after submitting the document, the country was hit by the first corona wave.
Images of overcrowded intensive care units and army vehicles transporting the dead went around the world.
In some hospitals, patients were accommodated in the corridors, had to share ventilators, and some doctors slept on and under the tables.
It's been weeks of chaos.
More than 96,000 Italians have died since the pandemic began.
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Police officers and civil defense employees loaded coffins onto a military vehicle in Bergamo in April 2020
Photo: Marco Di Lauro / Getty Images
Since then, relatives, lawyers and the general public have been asking themselves: Could that have been prevented?
The 34-page report to WHO was based on the International Health Regulations, a treaty of 196 states to contain disease and epidemics.
The signatories are required to submit an annual analysis of the status of the national contingency plans to the World Health Organization.
The ratings are based on standardized questionnaires.
The general director responsible for prevention in the Italian Ministry of Health finally sent the result by email.
But the promises made in it did not stand up to reality.
To the indignation of many Italians, it became known last May that the government had not updated the national pandemic plan since 2006.
Nevertheless, the government reported regular reviews to the WHO.
This is another reason why lawyers are now speaking of deception.
They also accuse the authorities of failing to implement the outdated plan themselves.
There were never any planned emergency exercises, and after the start of the pandemic, the mayor and doctors waited in vain for weeks for clear agreements and structures.
Was that why so many people died in the country?
To this day, survivors and relatives collect clues about possible mistakes.
In December, 500 families announced joint lawsuits.
The WHO document should provide them with arguments.
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A nurse takes care of an elderly corona patient in Bergamo
Photo: Marco Di Lauro / Getty Images
The former army general Pier Paolo Lunelli had already checked the corona measures of the authorities last year and criticized them sharply.
Even with the outdated plan, many things would have gone better, he concluded.
But at the beginning of the pandemic there was simply no strategy at all.
He recently started working in a newly founded think tank that is supposed to deal with the errors and develop recommendations for future pandemics.
"Of the
Report shows that the truth has been swept under the carpet, ”says Lunelli of the document.
“There was no useful update to the plans.
This is another reason why the first 20 days of the corona pandemic were a nightmare. "
The report is part of a file recently handed over to the Bergamo public prosecutor's office by lawyers.
"This document is decisive evidence that the government has deceived the WHO," says Consuelo Locati, one of the lawyers at SPIEGEL.
At the same time, the announcement of the document is an opportunity for Italy's new government of experts under the leadership of long-time ECB boss Mario Draghi.
In northern Italy, several investigations are now running to clear up possible errors in dealing with Corona.
The Bergamo public prosecutor's office questioned the health and interior ministers at the time, as well as Giuseppe Conte, Italy's prime minister until a few weeks ago.
There is no report from Italy for the past year.
The Ministry of Health recently announced in an email that it was still working on it.
The lawyers for the bereaved are already demanding consequences.
"We asked the prime minister to meet as representatives of the bereaved," says Consuelo Locati.
Their goal is a law on compensation for all families of coronavirus victims.
When asked, the Ministry of Health does not want to announce whether the emergency capacities of the health system are assessed differently today.
The fact that the new report is being thoroughly prepared could be an indication that crisis preparation is now being carried out more conscientiously than last year.
At that time, the document was submitted to the WHO with a careless error: The Ministry of Health had selected Indonesia as the sender in the corresponding PDF file, not Italy.
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