After the severe course of the corona infections in the Italian city of Bergamo at the beginning of the pandemic, your mayor has now shown disappointment with the bumpy vaccination start. It is unbelievable that in the northern Italian Lombardy, in which Bergamo is located, vaccination has started so slowly because of the holidays and the holidays, said Giorgio Gori of the Italian newspaper “La Repubblica” (Tuesday edition). “As if vaccination wasn’t an absolute priority,” he said.
In the spring of last year, the first wave of infections in Bergamo claimed many lives. The shocking images of military trucks taking the dead out of the city caused consternation not only in Italy. So far, more than 75,500 people have died with Sars-CoV-2 in Italy. More than 2.1 million corona infections were registered.
According to the mayor, the decisions about the vaccinations are made by the government of Lombardy. The was massively criticized after the delayed start of vaccination. The region’s health council, Giulio Gallera, justified the delay in the start of the vaccination by saying that the health workers were on vacation. Gallera had to defend himself against requests for resignation because of the statement.
179,000 vaccinations in Italy
According to the Ministry of Health, only around eleven percent of the available corona vaccinations have been administered in Lombardy on Tuesday morning. Other regions were already injecting more than half the doses available. Overall, the number of people vaccinated in Italy was just under 179,000. For comparison: In Germany, as of Monday lunchtime, more than 260,000 vaccinations were officially reported.
In several EU countries, however, vaccinations have been slow to start. In France on Tuesday morning there was still some uncertainty about the specific number of people vaccinated. It had exceeded 2000 vaccinations, it said.