It had been, for Piedmont, as the case of Pio Albergo Trivulzio, with a list of deaths that was updated day by day, and in the end in Vercelli there were 49 victims for Covid in the RSA of Piazza Mazzini ascertained by the prosecutor, who has now closed the investigations and asked for the indictment of six people, including the heads of the structure and managers of the ASL and 118 who, according to the investigators, had mismanaged the emergency.
The prosecutor Carlo Introvigne – who collected the investigation started by the prosecutor Davide Pretti – however changed the initial approach of the investigation and, in addition to having removed some minor positions from the file, dropped the accusations of culpable epidemic, for the which has requested archiving. For the six suspects for which the trial was requested, therefore, the disputes of manslaughter and omission of official documents remain standing.
The road taken by the prosecutor of Vercelli, led by the chief prosecutor Pier Luigi Pianta, is therefore in line with the jurisprudence drawn up by the Supreme Court which recognizes the existence of the crime of culpable epidemic only to those who adopt behaviors that cause the spread of the virus and not to those who, by failing to perform actions, leave the virus free to circulate and kill.
Vercelli, the shadow of a refusal behind six deaths in an RSA: “There is only one place in intensive care: we keep it for a younger patient”
Federica Cravero
Therefore, the conclusion reached by the prosecutor Introvigne seems to create an important precedent for all those investigations that in the Piedmont prosecutors – there are about a hundred of them in the prosecutors’ office – in Turin alone – look for any responsibility in the death from Covid of RSA guests during the first wave of the pandemic, when faced with an unknown virus, many did not have adequate protection tools, but even those who sought them found it difficult to obtain them as masks, gloves and gowns were diverted to hospitals. And so, slowly, the silent slaughter of the elderly took on apocalyptic proportions.
It had taken a long time before Vercelli realized what was happening in silence within the walls of the RSA in Piazza Mazzini. The elderly died at a rate that was not the same as always. The mortuaries burst, the deceased elderly remained for hours in their beds because the staff could not keep up with the living, let alone the dead.
Coronavirus: two suspects for the silent massacre in the retirement home in the center of Vercelli, the Pio Trivulzio of Piedmont
by FEDERICA CRAVERO
But there was above all an episode, discovered during the investigations, which had attracted the attention of the investigators, namely what happened on the evening of March 19, when the RSA requested the intervention of 118. Although several elderly people were in serious conditions, they were not taken to the hospital in Vercelli where there was only one place in intensive care.
Instead of looking for a place in other hospitals, it was decided to “let them die in their bed”, applying the so-called military triage: “We are talking about old people from 85 to 96 years … I was a doctor to save everyone, but in this case we must go down hard … – says the doctor of the 118 operations center in the phone calls recorded and acquired by the prosecutor speaking with the Vercelli hospital – I spoke with the crisis unit, with your health management and with you, we all agree to leave them in their place, beautifully and quietly “. “Okay – you hear the answer – I would too … soon they will have to bring the coffins”. And in fact, five of the elders who needed hospitalization that evening died on March 20, 21 and 24.
In the indictment brought by the prosecutor of Vercelli, the responsibilities of the administrative director Alberto Cottini, the health director Sara Buvet and the coordinator of the Oss, the social and health workers, Silvia Cerutti, accused of manslaughter for not closing entirely the retirement home, “allowing relatives to visit occasionally even after the ban on March 4, 2020. Furthermore, they had not established an adequate distancing between the guests, on the contrary they continued to organize small birthday parties, bingo or the recitation of the rosary “, writes the pm.
In addition, the healthy and the sick shared the spaces in a promiscuous way in Piazza Mazzini, the operators did not have personal protective equipment, and when masks and gloves arrived they were used for several days, although they were disposable. And still no sanitization and no tampons had been done, however not in a timely manner.
To this is added the role of Chiara Serpieri, pro tempore general manager of the ASL of Vercelli, who had “improperly refused any intervention to aid the structure, in the erroneous belief that it was a private structure for which the control and supervision of the ASL “and this despite the director having” informed her of the serious contagion situation that had spread within the structure and of the difficulties in finding health personnel to replace the one absent due to illness “and had been also “urged to intervene even by the mayor of Vercelli and also in the context of meetings in the prefecture”.
Furthermore, Serpieri, according to the magistrates, had not bothered to give “communications of directives, instructions, good practices and guidelines issued by the government, the Higher Institute of Health, the Ministry of Health and the Piedmont Region” to deal with the Covid emergency. And yet, the investigation concludes, “he omitted to immediately arrange the necessary inspections at the structure by the supervisory commission, at least until April 9, when most of the guests had died”.
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