Covid at the Alzano hospital, dismissal requested for all those under investigation

Bergamo. The Bergamo Prosecutor’s Office has requested the dismissal of the Covid investigation due to territorial jurisdiction. Or rather, for the charges and the suspects on which the Court of Ministers had not expressed its opinion, which had already archived the positions of the most illustrious names: the then Minister of Health Roberto Speranzathe former prime minister Giuseppe Contethe president of the Lombardy Region Attilio Fontanathe former Welfare Councilor Giulio Gallera, the president of the CTS Franco Locatelli and the members of the committee Silvio Brusaferro, Angelo Borrelli, Claudio D’Amario, Giuseppe Ippolito.

The crimes of culpable epidemic remained standing against Francesco Locati, then general director of the Asst Bergamo Est, of the health director Roberto Cosentina and of Giuseppe Marzulli, former medical director and head of health emergency management of the Alzano hospital.

The three were also accused of manslaughter “for not having assessed the risk, which was reasonably foreseeable, and for not having adopted all the technical, organizational and procedural measures in order to contain the spread of the virus within the Pesenti Fenaroli hospital”.

The other crime that the prosecutor’s office accused them of was that of negligent personal injury for having “caused through negligence a personal injury resulting in the Sars-Cov 19 disease lasting more than 40 days to 34 healthcare workers at the hospital”.

For these three crimes, the prosecutor’s office, in its request for dismissal, recalled the decision of the Court of Ministers which had not established a causal link.

Finally, there is the crime of ideological forgery, because “they attested in public documents to facts that were not true”. In particular, Cosentina wrote in a note dated 28 February 2020 addressed to the Bergamo ATS that “as soon as there was the suspicion and subsequent certainty of the positive swab test, the foreseen procedures were immediately adopted”. A circumstance that the Prosecutor’s Office considered false, as the sanitization of the emergency room and the departments had not yet been completed. Locati declared, in the reports of 8 April and 10 April 2020 that “in the short period of time in which the facility was closed, the environments were sanitized with the adoption of all the measures required by the current specific cleaning protocol and Covid-19 sanitisation”. That from the first two reports “swabs were taken of all patients with respiratory symptoms and also of all hospitalized patients regardless of symptoms (…) the operators were given swabs starting from symptomatic close contacts, then to all asymptomatic close contacts, and finally to all the staff present.” That “as early as 23 February 2020, the Alzano emergency room will provide a separate access route for suspected Covid patients”. Circumstances which, according to the investigators, turned out to be false.

Also the general director of the Bergamo ATS Massimo Giupponi he was under investigation for false ideology. In a note dated 28 May 2020 sent to the Lombardy Region in response to a question from the then regional councilor Nicolò Carretta “falsely attested” that the patients who had passed through the emergency room had been transferred to other facilities and isolation areas had been created for patients who entered the emergency room with suspicious symptoms waiting for the swab. Instead, according to the investigators, the positive patients “had remained stationed in the same emergency room for several days”.

Giupponi also certified that “from 23 February the health surveillance procedure was immediately adopted for the contacts of patients who had passed through the hospital”. An untrue circumstance according to the Prosecutor’s Office given that “the surveillance plan was activated starting from March 3”.

Finally, the director of the ATS was accused of refusing official actions as he “remained inert without promptly taking actions of his office which, for reasons of public health, had to be adopted without delay”.

As regards the crimes of forgery, the prosecutor’s office identified a lack of intent.

The 43 files relating to the investigation are now on the desk of the judge of preliminary investigations who will have to express his opinion on the request for dismissal. He will be able to accept the request and archive it, return the documents to the Prosecutor’s Office to request further investigations or arrange for compulsory trial.

The offended parties, including members of the sereniesempreuniti association, family members of the Covid victims, have not yet presented any opposition to the dismissal.