ROME (AP) – The octogenarians of Tuscany watched in disbelief and indignation with lawyers, magistrates, teachers and other younger professionals being vaccinated against COVID-19 before them, despite government promises to prioritize Italy’s older citizens. Even some of their adult children jumped in front of them.
According to one estimate, the failure to give vaccines to people over 80 and people in poor health has cost thousands of lives in a country with the oldest population in Europe and the second largest loss of life in the pandemic.
While the elderly were being pushed aside, a dozen prominent seniors in Tuscany published a letter calling on the authorities, including the region’s governor, for what they said was a violation of their health rights enshrined in the Italian constitution.
“We asked ourselves, ‘What is the reason for this disparity?’”, Said signatory Enzo Cheli, a retired judge at the Constitutional Court who is 87 months old. At the end of March, he had not yet been vaccinated, three months after Italy’s vaccination campaign.
“The appeal was born out of this idea that mistakes were being made, abuses,” said Cheli in a telephone interview from her country house near Siena. He noted that investigations are ongoing in Tuscany and other regions where professionals have been given priority status.
Those over 80 in Tuscany have the lowest national vaccination rate.
Another signatory was editorial cartoonist Emilio Giannelli, 85, who was not vaccinated, while his son, a lawyer, was.
A cartoon by Giannelli appeared on the front page of the Corriere della Sera depicting a young man in a business jacket kicking an old man with a cane out of a vaccine line.
In a country where many citizens have learned not to rely on generally weak national governments, lofty influence is exercised by lobby groups, sometimes ridiculed as “caste”.
Prime Minister Mario Draghi deplored this “contractual influence”, saying last month that the “bottom line is the need to vaccinate the most fragile people and those over 80”. His government insists that vaccinations proceed in descending order by age, with the only exceptions being school and university officials, security forces, prison and prison officials, and those in community homes, such as convents.
According to a calculation by the ISPI study center, opening vaccination lists for young Italians cost 6,500 lives from mid-January to March, a period in which almost 28,000 died.
ISPI researcher Matteo Villa said that any decision to vaccinate non-health professionals who face risks of infection should be limited to 50 years or older.
“If we give 100 vaccines to people over 90, we will save 13 lives,” said Villa in a telephone interview, citing death rates. “But 100,000 vaccines are needed for people aged 20 to 29 to save just one life.”
The current average age of those killed by pandemics in Italy is 81.
During the pandemic, older Italians were the majority of deaths, and not just in Tuscany. Just before Draghi raised the alarm about lobby groups, journalists from the small region of Molise were ready to receive vaccines in advance. In Lombardy, veterinarians took priority. In Campania, the region that includes Naples, salespeople from pharmaceutical companies have priority status.
Regional leaders blame the delay in delivering the vaccine, claiming that the launch of the previous government’s vaccine opened the door for lobby groups.
Some regions such as Lazio, which includes Rome, have withstood the pressure. At the end of March, almost 64% of people aged 80 and over in Lazio had received at least one injection of COVID-19, compared with 40% in Tuscany.
Speaking about society’s weakest points, the governor of Lazio, Nicola Zingaretti, told the 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 do, are more at risk of dying than the others ”.
Of the 4.4 million residents of Italy aged 80 and over, less than 29% were vaccinated and another 27% received only the first dose by the end of March, said the GIMBE foundation, which monitors healthcare in Italy.
This compares to 95% of that age group in Malta, which received at least one dose, and 85% in Finland, according to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, Italy.
In Britain, where vaccine distribution started about a month before the EU, most people over 50 received at least one dose.
GIMBE employee Renata Gili linked a large part of Italy’s uneven performance to different organizational capacities, as well as “an excess of autonomy in the regions in choosing the priority categories to vaccinate”.
Some lobby groups are not backing down. The National Association of Magistrates, which represents the majority of Italy’s more than 9,600 magistrates, has threatened to further slow the sluggish justice system if they are not prioritized. On Thursday, the tourism lobby demanded priority vaccines for its workers, classifying them as essential for the country’s recovery.
On Friday, a senior Ministry of Health official, Giovanni Rezza, tried to prevent further priority disputes.
“There was a struggle between the categories ″ to get the vaccine priority, Rezza said at a news conference when asked if supermarket clerks could get special status. “We said, ‘We are going to end the teachers, the security forces, but we are not going to have any more categories.’ We will simply use age criteria ”.
The army general who was summoned last month by Draghi to shake up Italy’s COVID-19 vaccination campaign recognizes his widespread problems.
“Everything is fine? No, ”General Francesco Figliuolo told reporters on Wednesday in Milan.
It is not known how many people in Italy received priority vaccines. The Tuscan health commission office said that before Draghi shut down special interest groups, 10,319 lawyers, magistrates, court officials and officials received a dose in the region.
Allowing lawyers and others to have quick access to vaccines is “a problem, and everyone is upset about it,” said Nathan Levi, an antiques dealer in Florence who will turn 83 next month and is still waiting. “That’s what Italy is all about. The people who press ”go ahead.
Of the 10.6 million doses administered so far in Italy, about 1.6 million were for people classified as “others”, which has led some politicians to demand to know who they are. When questioned, Figliuolo’s office admitted it had no idea and said it was pressing the regions for specific details.
Italians in their 70s, who are largely out of the job market, are still waiting for their doses. As of March 31, only 8% had received the first dose and less than 2% both.
Then there are people with fragile health, who have a priority category on the government’s implementation chart.
“The situation for the ‘fragile’ is of great uncertainty,” said Francesca Lorenzi, a 48-year-old lawyer from Milan with breast cancer. She noted that if cancer patients finished therapy more than six months ago, they are no longer considered “fragile”.
“In the meantime, they gave doses of Pfizer to 60-year-olds in very good health because they have university contracts. I don’t understand why a university professor or lawyer should get vaccinated before the others, ”she said.
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Colleen Barry reported from Milan. Pan Pylas in London contributed to this report.
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