Coronavirus has killed almost 16,000 people in Lombardy and infected more than 87,000 – the highest number per capita in Italy. By comparison, just next door in Piedmont and Veneto, the disease has killed 3,838 and 1,898 people, respectively, as of Thursday.
Lombardy’s fate began to be charted out in the late 1990s when the Italian government decentralised healthcare, giving regions more autonomy. At the same time, the privatisation of healthcare became more prevalent. Although other regions continued to mostly maintain the public health system, a succession of Lombardy governors, including Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia between 1995 and 2013, and Matteo Salvini’s far-right League since then, allowed the private and public systems to compete for funds based on efficiency.
Even though Lombardy developed one of the most enviable healthcare systems in Italy, the strategy left private firms free to invest in areas of care that made more money, inevitably leading to a reduction of beds in the public system and leaving the region less equipped to meet all types of health needs.
For example, over the last 25 years there has been a reduction in the number of hospital departments dealing with infectious diseases. There has also been a fall in the number of doctors entering specialist schools for infectious diseases.
Codogno was immediately quarantined along with nine other nearby towns after the sudden outbreak. Vò Euganeo, a town in Veneto where the first person in Italy died of Covid-19, was also quarantined. But unlike Lombardy, Veneto quickly controlled the contagion by mass testing its population.
Lombardy authorities also delayed closing Bergamo, partly because they were under pressure by business associations to keep things going. Across Lombardy, production never completely stopped. People continued to work during the lockdown and without all the precautions that came later.
— source theguardian.com | 29 May 2020