MILAN – In February, she said that the directors of the nursing home where she worked prevented her from wearing a mask, for fear it would scare patients and their families. In March, she became infected and talked about the coronavirus that spreads around the house. In May, he was fired amid claims he had “damaged the company’s image.”
Hamala Diop, a 25-year-old medical assistant, questioned the decision in a lawsuit to be heard in court on Monday. The procedures will raise the question of whether whistleblowers have paid a price by raising alarms about dangerous conditions in medical facilities.
After successfully narrowing the curve of new cases after a devastating initial outbreak, Italy is preparing for a potential second wave.
The country, with the oldest population in Europe, was especially affected by the coronavirus, and almost half of the infections reported in April occurred in nursing homes, according to the Italian National Institute of Health. The breadth of the outbreak put the management of nursing homes under judicial and media scrutiny.
As the country fears the emergence of new groups, some are concerned that the Diop experience may have a chilling effect on those seeking to generate early warnings of potentially dangerous behavior.
“No one protected us from contracting the virus,” said Diop, “and no one protected us from being fired.”
On February 26, when officials had already closed the cities in the northern region of Lombardy, a director of the Palazzolo Institute of the Don Gnocchi Foundation, a nursing home in Milan where Mr. Diop worked, walked to the room where the Mr. Diop and his colleagues were tidying up the dining room. Diop said in an interview that the director told them not to wear masks, that the building was safe and that they should not scare residents away. When presented with this account, the foundation said they had always rejected any allegation that employees were unable to wear masks as “serious and unfounded.”
For more than two weeks, while the coronavirus epidemic was exploding in the region, Diop said that he and his colleagues washed, changed and fed residents without wearing masks or other protection. More than 150 residents would die in March and April, according to Milan prosecutors investigating the case. When asked if that number was correct, nursing home officials declined to comment.
“They watched television and saw what was happening outside,” he said of the residents, “but I had to reassure them and tell them that the virus will never enter our safe place.”
The director of human resources encouraged managers to place licensed employees who “polarized” or insisted on wearing protective gear “even when not required,” according to an email presented as evidence. Diop said he received his first mask on March 12, when more than 15,000 people in the country had already been infected and days after the government imposed nationwide restrictions on movement and work.
That same day, Mr. Diop fell ill. A week later, his swab test was positive for the virus. His mother, who also works at home, was also infected.
Eleven days after she got sick, she filed her complaint with 17 colleagues, most of whom also had the virus. In it, they argued that the administration had covered up the first cases of coronavirus among staff and prevented them from wearing the necessary protective equipment, contributing to the spread in the nursing home.
“We are his arms and legs and everyone becomes like our grandparents and grandmothers,” Diop said of the residents. “And they prevented us from protecting them,” he said, referring to management.
In a statement, the foundation’s lawyers said the home had followed instructions from the Italian National Institute of Health about wearing masks, and that communications about infections among workers were conducted in accordance with privacy laws.
After Italian newspapers published news of the lawsuit, dozens of the victims’ families filed similar complaints. Milanese prosecutors opened a criminal investigation into the administration of the house. On May 7, Diop was fired by the cooperative that employed him, a subcontractor to the foundation, for talking to reporters about the lawsuit, and many of his colleagues were also transferred or removed.
Diop questioned the decision, and on Monday his lawyer, Romolo Reboa, said he would argue in court that Italian and European laws on whistleblowers should protect workers who alert to life-threatening situations. Mr. Reboa cited a similar case of a nurse in Rome who was fired after speaking anonymously on the radio about the lack of masks at her hospital.
“In nursing homes, Covid’s policy was that if you talk, they will penalize you,” said Reboa. “And this created a climate of intimidation that had a direct impact on the number of deaths.”
Diop, originally from Mali, lives with his parents and two brothers in Cormano, a small town north of Milan. He said losing his job was a serious financial setback and that he was concerned about not finding a new job given his record.
While he expected to face some consequences for his actions, he said he did not believe he would lose his job, as the government had imposed a freeze on layoffs during the emergency and health workers were particularly sued.
“We are only heroes when they like it,” he said.
