It is March 3, 2020 and despite the sometimes heated discussion, the Technical-scientific committee puts pen to paper that the red zone, already planned for ten Municipalities of Lodigiano and for Vo’ Euganeo, must be extended to Alzano Lombardo and Nembro. TO”The Rt is definitely higher than 1, which is an indicator of a high risk of further spread of the infection. The Committee proposes to adopt the appropriate restrictive measures envisaged in the Municipalities of the red zone, also in Alzano Lombardo and Nembro, in order to limit the spread of infection. This objective criterion may in the future be applied in similar contexts», reads the report approved unanimously .
The data from the Higher Institute of Health relating to the two Municipalities, and the subsequent telephone conversation with the councilor and with the regional health manager of Lombardy, Julius Gallera e Luigi Cajazzo, leave no room for doubt. So the Cts takes that step, gives an opinion. An opinion which, however, does not translate into a government decree: the provision for extending the red zone is prepared, but it remains a draft. It is, that, one of the very few times in which the indications of the experts are not implemented by the government. ‘We didn’t expect it. However, perhaps today we no longer remember how strong the pressure against the red zone of a part of politics and business was in those days», recalls one of the members of that Cts.
The first months of 2020 are those of maximum chaos: news and alarms follow one another and are immediately overtaken by the next input. Doctors and heads of institutions are faced with aemergency of planetary proportions, that no one is ready to face. On 14 January, the World Health Organization announced that the virus is not transmitted from man to man and that the conditions for implementing a pandemic plan are not there. On January 21, the WHO also documents that the data collected suggest human-to-human transmission and launches the pandemic alert. On January 31, a national emergency is declared.
While having to chase information about the virus, the bodies that govern health in Italy try to identify countermeasures in real time. Among these, on February 5, the establishment of the Cts. Its function, it is written in the decree of appointment, is to «advice and support to the activities for overcoming the epidemiological emergency”. Advice and support, in fact, as the members now reaffirm: «Ours were indications, it was politics that decided, which also on the reopening of schools he did not follow us.’ The reference is to April 2021: the Cts issued an opinion in which it advised against the reopening of schools in the yellow and orange areas, but the government, then led by Draghi, ordered the return to the benches.
In March 2020, while Covid manifests all its virulence in Lombardy and politics is divided on countermeasures – these are the days of the “Bergamo doesn’t stop” campaign – the CTS evaluates the countermoves with almost daily meetings. On March 3, examine the extent of the red zone. In the committee, geriatricians and pediatricians express doubts: shut everything down and isolate the citizens it could expose the most fragile, the elderly, children, the chronically ill, to other risks. At the end of the meeting, however, the position of infectious disease specialists and representatives of hospital managers, of terapie intensive. However that opinion will never turn into a measure. AND one week later for the whole country it will be lockdown.