ROME (AP) – Octogenarians in Tuscany watched with disbelief and outrage as lawyers, magistrates, professors and other younger professionals were vaccinated before them against COVID-19, despite government pledges to prioritize Italy’s oldest citizens. Even some of their grown children stood out for them.
In a country with the oldest population in Europe and the second highest loss of life during the pandemic, failure to shoot people over 80 and people with fragile health is estimated to have taken thousands of lives.
While the elderly were being pushed aside, a dozen prominent seniors in Tuscany published a letter calling on authorities, including the region’s governor, for a violation of their health care rights enshrined in the Italian constitution.
“We wondered, what is the reason for this inequality?” Said signer Enzo Cheli, a retired constitutional court judge who is a month older than 87 years. At the end of March, he had still not been vaccinated, three months after the Italy vaccination campaign.
“The call came from the idea that mistakes were being made, abused,” Cheli said in a telephone interview from his country house near Siena. He noted that investigations are underway in Tuscany and other regions where professionals have been given priority status.
Those over 80 in Tuscany have the lowest vaccination rates nationally.
Another signer was 85-year-old cartoonist Emilio Giannelli, who has not been vaccinated, while his son, a lawyer, has.
The front cover of the Corriere della Sera featured a Giannelli cartoon featuring a young man in a business jacket kicking an old man leaning on a stick from a vaccine line.
In a country where many citizens have learned not to rely on often weak national governments, there is a great deal of influence exerted by lobby groups, sometimes derided as ‘castes’.
Prime Minister Mario Draghi disapproved of such “contractual influence”, saying last month that the “baseline is the need to vaccinate the most vulnerable and over-80s”. His administration insists that vaccinations are in descending order by age, with the only exceptions: school and college staff, security forces, prison staff and inmates, and people in communal housing such as monasteries.
Opening vaccination roles for younger Italians cost 6,500 lives from mid-January to March, a period in which nearly 28,000 died, according to a calculation by the ISPI think tank.
ISPI researcher Matteo Villa said any decision to vaccinate non-healthcare providers facing infection risks should have been limited to people 50 and older.
“If we give 100 vaccines to people over 90, we save 13 lives,” Villa said in a telephone interview, citing death rates. “But it takes 100,000 vaccines for 20-29 year olds to save just one life.”
The current average age of pandemic deaths in Italy is 81 years.
During the pandemic, the oldest Italians made up the majority of the dead, and not just in Tuscany. Just before Draghi raised the alarm about lobby groups, journalists in the small Molise region were ready to get early vaccinations. In Lombardy, veterinarians were given priority. In Campania, the region including Naples, sellers of pharmaceutical companies were given priority status.
Regional leaders blame delays in vaccine delivery as the previous administration’s introduction of vaccines has opened the door for lobby groups.
Some regions, such as Lazio, which includes Rome, withstood their pressure. At the end of March, nearly 64% of people over 80 in Lazio had received at least one COVID-19 injection, compared to 40% in Tuscany.
Speaking of the most vulnerable in society, Lazio Governor Nicola Zingaretti told Corriere della Sera newspaper, “It is true that everyone is at risk of getting COVID, but the difference is that they are among those who, if they catch it, get it. are at risk of dying more than others. “
Of the 4.4 million residents aged 80 or older, less than 29% had been vaccinated, and a further 27% had only received the first dose by the end of March, said the GIMBE foundation, which oversees healthcare in Italy.
That’s comparable to 95% of that age group in Malta who received at least one dose, and 85% in Finland, according to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, Italy.
In Britain, where the introduction of vaccines started about a month before the EU, most people over 50 have received at least one dose.
GIMBE official Renata Gili linked much of Italy’s uneven performance to differing organizational capacities and “too much autonomy in the regions in the choice of priority categories to vaccinate”.
Some lobby groups are not withdrawing. The National Magistrates Association, which represents most of Italy’s more than 9,600 magistrates, threatened to further slow down the snail’s legal system if they were not given priority. On Thursday, the tourist lobby demanded priority vaccines for its employees, which it described as essential to the country’s recovery.
On Friday, a top health ministry official, Giovanni Rezza, tried to cut jockey for priority.
“There was a struggle between categories” to get vaccine priority, Rezza told a news conference when asked if supermarket employees could be given special status. ‘We said,’ Let’s finish the teachers, the security forces, but let’s run out of categories. ‘We will just use age criteria. “
The army general who was overheard by Draghi last month to shake up the Italian COVID-19 vaccination campaign, acknowledges the widespread problems.
“Is everything all right? No, ”General Francesco Figliuolo told reporters in Milan on Wednesday.
It is not known how many people in Italy have received priority vaccines. The Tuscany Health Commission office said that before Draghi pulled the plug on special interest groups, 10,319 lawyers, magistrates, clerks and staff had been dosed in the region.
Giving lawyers and others quick access to vaccines is “a problem, and everyone is angry about it,” said Nathan Levi, an antiques dealer in Florence who turns 83 next month and is still waiting. “That is what Italy is all about. The people who put the pressure ”are moving forward.
Of the 10.6 million doses administered in Italy so far, about 1.6 million went to people classified as “other”, prompting some politicians to demand who they are. When questioned, Figliuolo’s office admitted it had no idea and said it was pushing the regions for specific details.
Italians in their 70s, who have largely no workers, are still waiting for their photos. By March 31, only 8% had received a first dose and less than 2% had received both.
Then there are people with vulnerable health, who have a priority category on the government rollout map.
“The situation for the ‘vulnerable’ is one of enormous uncertainty,” said Francesca Lorenzi, a 48-year-old lawyer in Milan with breast cancer. She noted that if cancer patients ended therapy more than six months ago, they are no longer considered “ vulnerable. ”
Meanwhile, they were giving doses of Pfizer to 60-year-olds in good health because they had college contracts. I don’t understand why a college professor or a lawyer should be vaccinated before the others, ”she said.
Colleen Barry reported from Milan. Pan Pylas in London contributed to this report.
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