WhatsApp messages exchanged between Italian politicians and senior health officials at the start of the coronavirus pandemic reveal how leaders attempted to protect the country’s image as it became the first in Europe to be hit, while appearing to joke about Italy’s role in the spread of the virus across the continent.
The messages are part of an inquiry that led prosecutors to place former prime minister Giuseppe Conte, former health minister Roberto Speranza and 17 other officials under investigation on suspicion of “aggravated culpable epidemic” and manslaughter in connection with the government’s response at the beginning of the pandemic.
Italy was the first European country to be engulfed by a large outbreak of the virus, with the first locally transmitted case confirmed in Codogno, southern Lombardy, on 21 February 2020.
Several other European countries subsequently reported their first coronavirus cases, all with apparent links to the escalating outbreak in Italy.
However, in a WhatsApp message written on 5 March 2020 and seen by the Guardian, Speranza tells a colleague that “we must exploit” a report claiming Europe’s first coronavirus case was detected in Germany in order to protect Italy’s image.
The next day, Giuseppe Ruocco, who at the time was secretary general at the health ministry and is among those being investigated, appeared to mock the cases detected in Europe among travellers returning from Italy. “Today we gave away 2 covid cases in Austria, 1 in France and 1 in Spain … and maybe 1 in Germany,” he wrote.
The investigation, launched by prosecutors in Bergamo, the Lombardy province worst hit during the first wave of the pandemic, and driven by the relatives of Covid-19 victims, centres on the alleged failure by authorities to take adequate measures to prevent the spread of the virus by quarantining the towns of Alzano Lombardo and Nembro when outbreaks occurred there two days after the Codogno case was confirmed.
Unlike Codogno, which was immediately quarantined along with nine other towns in Lombardy and one in Veneto, the Alzano Lombardo hospital was reopened hours after the outbreak, while Bergamo province only went into lockdown with the entire Lombardy region two weeks later.
Bergamo registered 6,000 excess deaths during the first wave of the virus, and prosecutors say 4,000 could have been prevented had the province been immediately quarantined.
Meanwhile, as Covid-19 rapidly spread and regional and national authorities locked horns over whether to quarantine the Lombardy region, a WhatsApp exchange between regional health officials Aida Andreassi and Marco Salmoiraghi implies an attempt by leaders to withhold the truth about the severity of the situation. “Do you know what the [Lombardy] president said?” Andreassi wrote. “You can’t tell the truth. I said, ‘Well then, it is as if we’re in China.’ He replied that we are worse than China – at least there is a dictatorship.”
Fontana, who was recently re-elected as a governor of Lombardy, is also among those being investigated.
A message by Ruocco on 29 February 2020 – almost two weeks before the country went into lockdown – describes the chaotic management of the pandemic. “Lots of stuff going on: the scientific committee clashing with Conte and Speranza, urged rethinking … It is a world war.”
Another crucial element of the investigation is the alleged absence of an updated national pandemic plan. Italy’s dated to 2006.
Those under investigation now have time to present their defence to a judge, who will then decide whether or not to send them to trial.
Speranza, who remained health minister until the collapse of Mario Draghi’s government last summer, said last week that he felt “very serene and certain” that he had always acted “with discipline and honour in the exclusive interest of the country”. A source close to him said he would not be making any further comment.
Andreassi, who is not under investigation, said it is not possible to give interviews as “the work of the judiciary is still ongoing”.
Ruocco did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Jacopo Pensa, the lawyer for Fontana, said his client had been officially notified of the investigation and would need time to “carefully study” the legal document before commenting. “We need to be prudent,” he said.
Conte, who now leads the Five Star Movement, the party that at the time of the Covid outbreak led the government in coalition with the centre-left Democratic party, said last week he was ready to collaborate immediately with the judiciary and “felt calm in facing the country and Italian citizens”.
