Gallera admits: “Lombardy could immediately establish the red zone in the Bergamasco” – La Stampa

MILAN. After a month to strongly deny – the last one just yesterday evening, with a press release – the possibility that the Lombardy Region could have established the red zone in Bergamo alone – in the municipalities of Alzano Lombardo and Nembro – as early as the beginning of March, this morning Lombardy Region Councilor for Welfare Giulio Gallera admitted, in an interview with “Agorà” on Rai3, that they could have done it and not the Government: “Could we have done it? I have deepened and actually there is a law that allows it, “said the commissioner. The law to which it refers is the one reported yesterday by “La Stampa”, the 833 of 1978. In paragraph 1 of article 2, in fact, the rule, which regulates in Italy and attributes the legislative competences to the State and Regions in Health matters, he explains that “the Minister of Health can issue orders of a contained and urgent nature regarding hygiene and public health”. So, as had already happened for Codogno and 11 other municipalities, the government could also make a red zone in the Bergamo area, which was already one of the most affected areas in Lombardy at the beginning of March. But in paragraph 3 of the same article of the law, we read that “in the same matters (that is, hygiene and public health, ed.), Orders of a limited and urgent nature are issued by the president of the regional council or by the mayor, with efficacy extended respectively to the region or part of its territory comprising several municipalities and to the municipal territory ». Therefore, the Region also had the opportunity to intervene and, explains the law, even to use the army and law enforcement agencies.

But let’s reconstruct the facts. On 3 March the province of Bergamo went from 244 positive cases to 373 in 24 hours, immediately taking on the size of a second outbreak. That same day Gallera announces that he has asked the government to establish a red zone. And in the evening, the Istituto Superiore di Sanità gives a positive opinion. The government’s OK is awaited but it does not arrive. Instead, the decree of 8 March arrives for the orange zone in Lombardy and 14 other provinces. In the Bergamo area, to date, there are about 2370 deaths and almost 10,000 infected. On March 16, responding in a press conference to “La Stampa” which recalled the positive opinion of the ISS on the establishment of the red zone, President Fontana says: “The government had decided not to take it, honestly I want to take responsibility but for I prefer the sanitary ones to do it ».

Among the resistances of those days, also those of Confindustria Bergamo which on 28 February launched a video entitled “Bergamo is running / Bergamo does not stop” «to reassure the international partners of the Bergamo companies». The company organization recalled that there were 376 companies in that area with a turnover of over 650 million euros per year. Alzano Lombardo and Nembro, in average Val Seriana, are not only at the center of this industrial area: they are also two of the municipalities that, from February 21 to today, have paid the highest price of the epidemic, with hundreds of infections and as many dead.

This morning Gallera made clear that “when the army trucks arrived in Bergamo on 5 March we were convinced that it would be activated” by the Government and “it would not make sense for us to make an ordinance. Then the government decided to do the red zone across the region. ” On March 3, Gallera continued, “I was in a telephone connection with Professor Brusaferro,” the president of the ISS, “thinking about this and he told me that they were closing the formal request for the establishment of the red zone to the government. On the 5th a large number of soldiers arrived in Alzano and Nembro and at that point we had the indication that the ISS had asked the government and the arrival of the soldiers and therefore we expected the establishment of the red zone “, underlined the ‘councilor. “Could we have done it on March 4 and 5? It could be, yes, but did it make sense to do it when we had evidence that the government was about to enact it? Then there was a broader strategy that we absolutely shared, “concluded Gallera.