Anti-Kovid vaccine plan threatened by fraudsters

An ISPI expert said on Friday that tens of thousands of lives had been lost due to Italy’s inability to target the most vulnerable people with the anti-Kovid vaccination campaign, with Prime Minister Mario Draghi criticizing the fraudsters.

After becoming one of the countries most affected by the epidemic last year, Italy launched its vaccine campaign, but failed to focus on the most vulnerable groups, i.e. the elderly. If it were more committed to the “ideal” vaccine plan, Italy would have recorded 8,000 fewer deaths this year, said Matteo Villa, a researcher and expert at the Institute for International Policy Studies (ISPI) in Milan.

“Unbalanced strategy, regional delays and vaccination scams have brought us here”

While 33,000 people have died since the beginning of January with targeted vaccines, “that number could be 25,000,” he said. “Unbalanced strategy, regional delays and vaccine scams have brought us here,” he wrote on his Twitter account.

2.4 million vaccines “for others”

On Thursday evening, Mario Draghi warned authorities in twenty Italian regions that they would have to vaccinate their populations if they wanted to lift the restriction measures in place.

“What awareness do people have of skipping the waiting list to try to get vaccinated in the first place, knowing that we are exposed to people over 75 or with a certain vulnerability in this way and therefore what is the real risk of dying?”, He began.

Government data show that Italy has so far provided a total of 12 million vaccines, including 4.2 million for those aged 80 and over and only 1.26 million for those over 70. In addition, 3.1 million vaccines were given to health workers, one million to academic staff and 2.4 million to the “other” defined category.