ROME (AP) – Tuscany’s octogenarians watched in disbelief and outrage as lawyers, magistrates, teachers and other younger professionals were vaccinated against COVID-19 in front of them, despite government promises to prioritize older citizens. ‘Italy. Even some of their adult children jumped in front of them.
According to one estimate, the failure to shoot people over the age of eighty and people in fragile health has cost thousands of lives in a country with the oldest population in Europe and its second loss of life in the pandemic.
As the elderly were elbowed apart, a dozen prominent elderly people from Tuscany published a letter calling on the authorities, including the governor of the region, to say it was a violation of their rights to care. health care contained in the Italian Constitution.
“We asked ourselves,‘ What is the reason for this disparity? “, Said the signatory Enzo Cheli, a judge of a retired constitutional court who is 87 months old. At the end of March, he had not yet been vaccinated, three months after the inoculation of Italy. Campaign.
“The appeal was born from the idea that mistakes, abuses were being made,” Cheli said in a telephone interview from his rural home near Siena. He noted that investigations are underway in Tuscany and other regions where professionals were given priority.
Tuscany’s over-80s have the lowest vaccination rate nationwide.
Another signatory was the 85-year-old editorial cartoonist Emilio Giannelli, who has not been vaccinated, while his son, a lawyer, has.
A caricature of Giannelli appeared on the front page of the Corriere della Sera showing a young man in a business jacket kicking an old man leaning on a cane from a vaccine line.
In a country where many citizens have learned not to have often weak national governments, large-scale influence is exerted by pressure groups, sometimes ridiculed as “castes”.
Prime Minister Mario Draghi has denounced this “contractual influence”, saying last month that “the basic line is the need to vaccinate the most vulnerable people and those over 80”. His government insists that vaccinations are given in descending order of age, with the only exceptions being school and university employees, security forces, prison and inmate staff, and those in residences. communal as the convents.
According to a calculation by the ISPI think group, opening vaccines to younger Italians cost 6,500 lives from mid-January to March, a period in which nearly 28,000 died.
ISPI researcher Matteo Villa said any decision to vaccinate health professionals who were not at risk of infection should have been limited to 50 years or more.
“If we give 100 vaccines to people over 90, we save 13 lives,” Villa said in a telephone interview, citing mortality rates. “But 100,000 vaccines are needed for young people aged 20 to 29 to save just one life.”
The current average age of dead pandemic in Italy is 81 years.
Throughout the pandemic, the oldest Italians have been the most dead, and not just in Tuscany. Just before Draghi sounded the alarm about pressure groups, journalists in the small Molise region had been on the verge of receiving early vaccinations. In Lombardy, priority was given to veterinarians. In Campania, the region including Naples, vendors of pharmaceutical companies got the priority.
Regional leaders accuse delays in vaccine delivery, alleging that the previous government’s vaccine deployment opened the doors to pressure groups.
Some regions such as Latium, which includes Rome, resisted its pressure. By the end of March, almost 64% of Lazio’s 80-year-olds or older had received at least one COVID-19 shot, compared to 40% in Tuscany.
Speaking of the most fragile of society, Nicola Zingaretti, governor of Lazio, told the newspaper Corriere della Sera: “It is true that everyone risks receiving COVID, but the difference is that he is among those who, if caught, they run the risk of dying more than others. “
Of the 4.4 million Italian residents aged 80 and over, less than 29% had been vaccinated and another 27% had only received the first dose by the end of March, said the GIMBE foundation, which monitors health care in Italy.
This compares with 95% of this age group in Malta who have received at least one dose and 85% in Finland, according to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, Italy.
In Britain, where the vaccine was launched about a month before the EU, most people over the age of 50 have received at least one dose.
GIMBE official Renata Gili linked much of Italy’s unequal performance to different organizational capacities, as well as “an excess of autonomy in the regions in choosing the priority categories to be vaccinated.”
Some pressure groups do not back down. The National Association of Magistrates, which represents most of Italy’s more than 9,600 magistrates, threatened to further curb the snail-paced judicial system if it is not given priority. On Thursday, the tourist lobby demanded priority vaccines for its workers, calling them essential for the country’s recovery.
On Friday, a senior Health Ministry official, Giovanni Rezza, tried to cut off any other luggage as a matter of priority.
“There was a struggle between categories” to get the vaccine priority, Rezza said at a news conference when asked if supermarket employees could get special status. “We said, ‘Let’s finish the teachers, the security forces, but we don’t have any more categories.’ We’ll just use age criteria.”
The army general that Draghi approved last month to shake Italy’s COVID-19 vaccination campaign acknowledges its widespread problems.
“Is everything alright? No, “General Francesco Figliuolo told reporters in Milan on Wednesday.
It is not known how many people in Italy received priority vaccines. The Tuscany health commission office said that before Draghi pushed forward the special interest groups, 10,319 lawyers, magistrates, court clerks and staff had received a dose in the region.
Allowing lawyers and others to have quick access to vaccines is “a problem, and everyone is angry,” said Nathan Levi, an 83-year-old Florence antiquarian next month who is still waiting. “It simply came to our notice then. The people who put pressure ”go ahead.
Of the 10.6 million doses administered so far in Italy, about 1.6 million were intended for people classified as “others,” prompting some politicians to demand to know who they are. When questioned, Figliuolo’s office admitted that it had no idea and said it was pressuring the regions for specific details.
The 70-year-old Italians, largely out of the squad, are still waiting for their shots. As of March 31, only 8% had received a first dose and less than 2% had received both.
Then there are people with fragile health, who have a priority category on the government’s deployment chart.
“The situation of the ‘fragile’ is of enormous uncertainty,” said Francesca Lorenzi, a 48-year-old lawyer in Milan with breast cancer. He noted that if cancer patients have finished therapy more than six months ago, they are no longer considered “fragile”.
“Meanwhile, they gave doses of Pfizer to healthy 60-year-olds because they have university contracts. I don’t understand why a university professor or a lawyer should get vaccinated before others, ”he said.
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Colleen Barry reported from Milan. Pan Pylas of London contributed to this report.
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