Palermo, Biagio Conte’s missions declared “red zones”: the police supervise the reception center

The four structures of the “Mission Hope and Charity” of Biagio Conte, in Palermo, now become the red zone “to counteract the spread of the coronavirus. This was established by the president of the Sicilian Region Nello Musumeci, with his own ordinance , after more than thirty positive cases verified among the guests of the center.

The decision was adopted after a summit with the health councilor Ruggero Razza and the general director of the ASP of Palermo, Daniela Faraoni, who examined the advance of the infection and the dangerous promiscuity within the structures. The critical situation was accentuated by the refusal of almost all the subjects received to be taken to the Covid-Hotel San Paolo for mandatory quarantine. In the centers, now, only health and social workers and personnel involved in assistance activities related to the emergency will be allowed in and out. To ensure the effectiveness of the Musumeci ordinance, adopted in accordance with article 3 of Legislative Decree No. 19 of March 25, 2020, the police must be outside the structures.

In the four Mission Centers, technical groups from the Health Authority of the Region were sent yesterday to verify full compliance with the prevention measures and four teams from Usca to subject the more than seven hundred guests to a rapid swab.

Dozens of guests from Biagio Conte’s mission of hope and charity in via Decollati gathered at the entrance this morning and asked to leave. But you can not. On the ground, the police and ASP doctors continue to carry out swabs. The situation is critical. Of the 50 swabs that came back, 37 were positive. And only 3 migrants agreed to be transferred to the San Paolo hotel. The others refuse.

The Mission contacted the mediators of Doctors Without Borders to try to explain to the guests the reasons why it is no longer possible to leave the mission. Don Pino at the entrance tries to calm down, but the guests are many. In total 600, most of them of foreign origin. This morning a summit was convened in the prefecture on the case of the mission, Mayor Leoluca Orlando is in contact with the national government to make urgent decisions.

The mission guests ask to be able to leave as soon as possible because they want to go back to work: the fear is losing the little income they have, that is, the little ones in black.

Mayor Orlando wrote to Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte warning him that at the mission “the situation is particularly dire with a positive rate of more than 60 percent” and “aggravated by distance difficult, if not impossible.” In short, the mission runs the risk of “causing a situation of serious health risk” for which Orlando considers it necessary “to intervene by the national government to avoid the serious risk mentioned.”