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“In fact, if there is one good thing about the Ebola epidemic, it is that it can serve as a warning, as a wake-up call to prepare.” These are the words of Bill Gates reported during a TED speech in 2015 that someone had passed off as a prophecy of the Covid19 pandemic. In fact, he was too optimistic because this new health emergency revealed how the world was not prepared at all and the report on the Italian plan against the pandemic confirms this situation.
The investigation
“The conscious fig leaf” issued last night, Monday, November 30, 2020, follows one that dates from May 18 and entitled “Copy and paste” which highlights how the “Influenza pandemic plan” The Ministry of Health remains the same as in 2006. The report also denounces another case, namely the disappearance of a study on the withdrawn pandemic plan and the alleged hand of the WHO deputy director, Ranieri Guerra.
Ranieri Guerra himself had contested the report for having omitted, in a still previous investigation into the WHO, that as the former director of Prevention of the Ministry of Health “he had left an updated pandemic plan at the end of 2016.” There is a problem, because that plan on the Ministry site is still the same as in 2006.
The “missing” file
Let’s start with the document “An unprecedented challenge: Italy’s first response to COVID-19” announced on May 14, 2020 and literally disappeared a few days after the website of the body that had published it, that of WHO Europe (here a rescue in Archive).
The dossier, published by the Venice-based WHO European researchers, is still linked on the UNIDO ITPO website to the “Covid-19: information” section, but instead of referring to the PDF, you are redirected to the home page of the WHO website. Europe. There are traces of the document, someone has downloaded it and published it elsewhere, rendering any form of “censorship” useless. Someone did not like the dossier, such as Ranieri Guerra, who in an email retrieved from Report demanding some changes to the pandemic plan and the removal of a reference:
*****, you must immediately correct in the text:
1- National plan for preparedness and response to an influenza pandemic; Ministry of Health, 2006
And report what is available on the minsalute website: Last updated December 2016.
Don’t mess with me with this. And remove the reference to that idiot Curtale. Tonight we get in Report’s teeth and we can’t be suicidal.
I begged you to allow me to reread the draft before printing… damn… Now I’m blocking everything with Soumya. Let me have the revised version as soon as you can. Then you can’t get out.
The name of Ranieri Guerra is present in the WHO European dossier and is mentioned in the thanks for the revision of it, but in the email he assures that he did not read the draft before printing it.
The 2006 file is not “updated to 2016”
Ranieri Guerra, in the email reported by Informe, requests a note on the 2016 update of the pandemic plan published in 2006. The plan is still published today on the website of the Ministry of Health, but has remained the same since 2006.
The PDF file in the Ministry area has been tracked by the Web Archive over the years, allowing for any changes to be verified. Reading the metadata in the file currently present on the Ministry’s website shows that there are no updates.
Downloading the 2006 and the current one on the site we can make a comparison using tools such as the one provided by the Diffchecker.com site: “The text of the two files is identical”. Out of scruples and to avoid doubts, I made a change in one of the two files by adding a “2006” in the title: the tool detects the difference, in the same way that the site detects it. Draftable.com (the proof with the original files can be consulted here).
“The reference to that idiot Curtale”
In the email published by Informe and attributed to Ranieri Guerra we read the request to remove from the Venetian dossier the reference to an article published on April 15 on the site. Saluteinternazionale.info signed by Filippo Curtale, Director of International Relations at the UOC, INMP (National Institute for the Health Promotion of Migrant Populations and the Fight against Poverty Diseases). The title “Once upon a time the pandemic plan” could make us understand why Ranieri Guerra does not like it, but also the Italian government given the quote at the beginning of the article:
“She mistook a public health emergency for an intensive care emergency. At first there were no isolated cases, epidemiological investigations were not carried out, swabs were not given to the patients, the doctors went without individual protection … and above all they involuntarily spread the infection ”. (Dr. Guido Marinoni, President of the Bergamo Medical Association)
In fact, Curtale rejects the Italian handling of the pandemic:
Although we have been alerted in time and are in the best position to respond adequately to the pandemic, very little has been done to prevent and control it. The pandemic plan was ignored, the virus entered Italy and circulated freely for weeks, the Italian epidemiological experience was not activated, as Forastiere et al.[3] The result was that, when the pandemic broke out, much of the available resources went to improving the hospital and the intensive care system, with the media attention occupied by virologists, vaccine experts and intensive care, while there would be a need for understand where we went wrong or what could be done to ensure that plans for a pandemic are implemented successfully in the future.
“Something went wrong”, writes Curtale, who reports some analysis of the weaknesses of the system such as the management of arrivals, criticized in an article by Open on February 1, when the need arose for the government and Minister Speranza to fix a leak that could damage the country.
Pier Paolo Lunelli’s analysis
During the month of August, a document was published (updated in the following months) signed by Pier Paolo Lunelli, former general and director of the School of Joint Forces for Defense Nbc, in which the criticisms, weaknesses and lack of updating of the pandemic plan not updated on the Ministry’s website since 2006.
In the document, Decision no. 1082/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council, of October 22, 2013, which highlighted that proper pandemic risk planning should be considered a “national obligation”:
Member States should provide the Commission with regular updates on the progress of their national preparedness and response planning. The information reported by Member States should cover the elements that Member States are required to report to WHO in the context of the CSI.
Given what was reported in the EU Decision of 2013, according to Lunelli, all European states were legally obliged since then to keep pandemic planning updated following the guidelines of the WHO and the European Center for Disease Control, but emphasizes that the national pandemic plan “It has never been constantly updated since 2010, or maybe even since 2006.”
It must be said that if we read the list of pandemic plans published on the ECDC website, Italy is in “good company” as few countries, such as Germany and Sweden, have updated their documents to 2015 and 2016, while the others show dates even before 2006. Attention, Italy shows a 2010 update in the list, but the linked files are the same as in 2006 with no update found.
The Government’s response to the Report
In the area dedicated to research “The conscious fig leaf” we find the answers of the Ministry of Health to the questions in the Report.
Regarding the Venetian dossier, the press office declares that it does not appear to be an official document of the WHO and that it would never have been sent to the offices of the Ministry itself. The “not WHO” dossier statement is strange when it has the WHO Europe logo at the top.
The report asks a question about ongoing pandemic plans: “Are there ongoing pandemic management plans that are confidential or protected by confidentiality?” The press office responds as follows:
Regarding the response to Covid-19, Italy’s plan is described in the document “Prevention and response to Covid-19: evolution of the strategy and planning in the transition phase for the autumn-winter period” created by the Ministry of health. Higher Institute of Health, Higher Health Council, AIFA, INMI Lazzaro Spallanzani, Civil Protection, Inail, Conference of State Regions, AREU 118 Lombardia, Bruno Kessler Foundation (FBK), Extraordinary Commissioner Structure for the implementation and coordination of the necessary measures to the containment and contrast of the epidemiological emergency COVID-19 and others. The document is available on the website of the Ministry of Health: www.salute.gov.it.
Out of curiosity, here is the metadata of the document cited in the response to the Ministry’s Report dated October 13, 2020:
Conclusions
Come Open fact check We cannot, at the moment, confirm the veracity of the emails published by Report and attributed to Ranieri Guerra.
It is true that the dossier published by WHO Europe is no longer online on its website and can be consulted elsewhere.
With data in hand, it is correct to argue that the Pandemic Plan currently present on the website of the Ministry of Health has not been updated since 2006, the year of its publication.
On the ECDC website it appears that the Plan was updated to 2010, while on the Ministry website in 2016, but the linked file remains the same as 2006.
The Government, through the press office of the Ministry of Health, to the Report’s question “Are there management plans for the ongoing pandemic reserved or protected by confidentiality?” It responds with a current document from October 2020, but it would have been better to know the management plan implemented since the beginning of the Covid19 emergency.
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