The most emblematic curtain, between one audition and another, it is when the arrival (very late, but very justified) of Mario La Rocca, fresh from the audition-marathon in the Health Committee, is expected in Antimafia. While the monitor frames the regional deputies in bored wait, from a fluffy microphone, left open by the dem Nello Dipasquale, a question echoes: “Who are we waiting for, Santa Claus?”.
And in fact it is a bit like that. The Sicilian health plenipotentiary at the time of Covid, in a tour de force of over five hours, tries to give a little serenity to a regional government cornered by events, even before the opposition. With the shadow of the investigation into false data, which forced the former councilor Ruggero Razza to resign, with the former manager of Dasoe under house arrest, with all the weight on the shoulders of the governor-councilor Nello Musumeci and the double manager (La Rocca, in addition to Strategic Planning, now also leads the Health Activities Department and the Epidemiological Observatory on an interim basis), on the eve of the anticipation for a day with a strong political value.
And the absence of Musumeci has a precise meaning, with an adjoining outburst with the president of the Health Commission, Margherita La Rocca Ruvolo (Forza Italia), who had “dared” to summon him too, as acting councilor, in yesterday’s hearing. “But don’t you understand what moment we are at?” Do you want me to be tried by the opposition? », The sense of the governor’s outburst before communicating that he would be replaced, due to commitments, by the head of his technical secretariat, Giacomo Gargano. The absence of a governor “who claims to be the councilor for health in his spare time, while everything around is collapsing” is branded as “very serious” by the Grillini members of the Health Commission, who have requested (and obtained) direct streaming of the session. “With all due respect for the newspapers – says the president La Rocca Ruvolo at the beginning – it is here that we need to give answers on issues that interest citizens”.
But the super executive, after all, gets away with it. He brings homework on the chaos of numbers for the red zone in Palermo and the province, answers on the matrix of data finished in the interceptions on the “deaths to spread”, responds coldly to the criticisms of the opposition, slips away from the most difficult questions, throws the ball elsewhere, often in the stands, on the responsibilities that do not belong to him. And he reassures: “We are facing the pandemic well”. Eventually, perhaps, everyone will maintain their positions. But, since yesterday, there are figures and explanations on the table coming from the Region for the first time. And that maybe it would have been appropriate if they had been provided earlier.
Starting from the Palermo jungle. Where, even before the controversy over the lockdown, there is an emergency in the ward. The Cervello and Partinico hospitals, which welcome Covid patients, are now full; a similar situation is also recorded in Termini Imerese. Some waiting patients have been diverted to the hospital of Petralia Sottana where patients with low intensity of care are welcomed. The map, however reassuring, is provided by La Rocca and by the Covid commissioner of Palermo, Renato Costa.
«We remain thrilled and astonished in learning of the statements by Commissioner Costa made to the commission. One is thrilled to read that there has not been a collapse of the hospitals in Palermo “, exclaims Angelo Collodoro, regional deputy secretary of Cimo, the trade union of medical managers”. La Rocca rattles off the updated data on the Gecos platform. At this moment, 436 places dedicated to Covid in intensive care are available throughout Sicily, of which 185 are occupied; in ordinary hospitalizations 935 of the 2,165 beds available remain available. A trend in the employment of the departments which, claims the manager, “still holds.” But now “what is missing are above all the semi-intensive care beds because this second wave has different clinical characteristics from the first: less intensive care commitment but with a large number of younger infected subjects and with a request for intermediate assistance” .
Shortly after, before the Anti-Mafia commission, La Rocca will also return to the case of the audio in which last November he pressed health managers to “upload the data” to the platform to comply with the program set by the former councilor Razza. At the request of President Claudio Fava on the outcome of the report of the inspectors sent to Sicily by Minister Roberto Speranza, the bureaucrat replied that “we have not received the results, but I have informal feedback from the general managers on a substantial correspondence” between the indicated posts and those really available. “Even in some cases there were even more”, he adds, recalling only “a dispute on the type of seats at the Garibaldi”. The trade unionist Collodoro thinks differently: «Scenes from a film already seen a year ago, a squalid theater with data provided by those who made up the beds already in November. Go on like this, with the lottery numbers ».
Speaking of numbers. La Rocca, in the long hearing, admits that “we are pursuing the national epidemiological situation with two weeks of delay”. But he claims: “If we had not intervened in Palermo we would have risked turning all of Sicily” red “”. With this explanation on the data: «When the Musumeci government signed the ordinance for Palermo, the figure was 209 infections per 100 thousand inhabitants but we had the perception of a greater diffusion of the variants and we also recorded the pressure on hospitals. That figure is now consolidated: the incidence is 275 cases out of 100 thousand ».
But there are other delicate numbers. Those ended up in the investigation in Trapani (now the file is in Palermo) which beheaded the leaders of Sicilian health. “The statistics that end up in the ISS, and that determine the choices of the national government, are uploaded in single form by the peripheral structures with personal records”, La Rocca explains to the Antimafia, then distinguishing “the data for communication”, that is of the Civil Protection, “with a type of collection that is disaggregated and misaligned over time”. So what? “Going after the daily communication on the numbers of Covid, which no one has the possibility to consolidate, has meant that a climate of mistrust in the institutions is created”, scans the bureaucrat.
These numbers, however, do not fit in a flow that is available to the Sicilian CTS. “In no way is he involved in the data collection and transmission phase,” confirms La Rocca. Urged by Fava on the fact that the “wise men” of the Region have not been asked for opinions since last January, the executive cuts short: «The CTS is an external body. It is summoned when the commissioner deems his opinion necessary. If he does not consider it, he does not call him ». Shortly before, in front of the Health Commission, Salvatore Scondotto, coordinator of the CTS admits that “we met once or twice in March”. But the Region no longer seems to need them, also because, La Rocca justifies, “we are already in the third wave and we have already discussed many of the things we needed to know”.
Finally, with an official note, the regional Antimafia asked the executives of the implementing body for the Covid emergency, of the regional civil protection, of the single commissioning center and of the health departments for data on tenders for goods and services, on the hiring of staff, on the assignment of tasks. “It is one of the chapters in which the credibility of the Region is at stake,” says Fava. Even if La Rocca, in the hearing, justifies a lack of response on the contracts of the “Sorella Sanità” investigation with a proud annoyance: «I could not deal with it. Maybe because I’m busy managing a pandemic? ‘