Italy lost the opportunity to contain the Covid-19 virus because of political considerations.
This is the view of Dr Giorgio Palù, former head of the European and Italian Society for Virology and professor of virology and microbiology of the University of Padova. Speaking to news outlet CNN, he said that the country failed to meet the challenge with the urgency it required. The government was ‘lazy in the beginning… too much politics in Italy.’
Proposals were floated at the start of the outbreak to isolate travellers coming from China, but were rejected as racist. ‘Then it became seen as racist, but they were people coming from the outbreak,’ he commented.
Dr Palù added that widespread testing should have been undertaken at the start, to try to control it.
Italy now has in excess of 59 000 cases and 5 476 deaths. (https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/italy/
Doctors have expressed concerns that the scale of the outbreak could overwhelm the country’s medical infrastructure. Italy has received medical support from Cuba and China.
The political dimensions of Covid-19 have attracted a great deal of attention. It has been widely argued that the pandemic gained traction owing to the actions of the Chinese government, which attempted to play down the seriousness of the situation. Whether or not it is racist to identify the virus with China – although geographical signifiers are common in naming diseases – has likewise been the subject of much heated debate.