Covid, does the De Luca model in Campania really work?
Is De Luca really a good administrator? Facts, numbers and insights in the article by Tino Oldani for Italia Oggi
Speaking of which, Vincenzo De Luca, governor of Campania, does not beat anyone. He punches the video, he always has a joke ready, a sheriff's fame that doesn't look anyone in the face, not even his party, the Democratic Party. He supports Napoli football, and almost 70% of the Campania region confirmed him at the helm of the region. A plebiscite.
But is De Luca really a good administrator? Can Campania healthcare, under your guidance, be considered a model? Judging by the numbers, that wouldn't seem like it at all. Indeed, a table from the Department of Civil Protection (see below) places it in first place in the national ranking of expenditure for infected with Covid at the peak of the pandemic, when Campania was still among the regions least affected by the virus. last: for 4,423 infected people in Campania, the total expenditure was equal to 337.5 million euros, equal to 76,308 euros for each infected. Lombardy, the most affected region with 75,732 infected, spent 392.1 million in total, equal to 5,178 euros per infected.
Money for health care, as is well known, makes up about 80% of the Regions' budgets, and the governors are mainly responsible for it. How can such a large gap ever be justified between the per capita expenditure of Campania (76 thousand euros for each hospitalization) and that of Lombardy (5 thousand)? The Civil Protection table does not explain this. But only a blind person could fail to see that in such a high level of health care expenditure, together with the necessary expenses, even those that are not, especially the inefficiencies due to managerial mismanagement and clientelist waste, can lurk.
Yeah, the waste. For months, the newspapers have been beating the bass drum against the management of the pandemic by the Lombardy region, led by the League. The Milan prosecutor's office has opened various investigations, the latest on the cost incurred by the junta led by Attilio Fontana for vaccines against seasonal flu, investigations accompanied by extensive media coverage. All for sums to be verified and that, in the case of the coats supplied by the company of which the wife of Governor Fontana is a partner, is around 800 thousand euros. Well: if there is a crime, it is right that those who made a mistake pay. However, it is quite evident that these judicial investigations were ridden by the Democratic Party, and still are, in an attempt to throw the stigma of bad governance on the League, obviously to beat it in the next local elections. It's Italian politics, baby. And not from now.
Now, however, this table on the cost of hospitalized for Covid jumps out, its numbers are from a non-partisan source (Civil Protection), but it seems to no journalone and no power of attorney that the thing is of any interest. Too uncomfortable? The much reviled Lombardy not only spent almost 20 times less than De Luca's Campania, but also half compared to Luca Zaia's vaunted Veneto, where each hospitalization cost 10,212 euros, a sum that is still lower than the average expenditure of the 20 regions (12,493 EUR).
In any case, Fontana and Zaia were, yes, they were models in the containment of expenses not only with respect to De Luca, but to all the regional left-wing governors. In Tuscany, the per capita expenditure per Covid hospitalized (40,280) was eight times greater than that of Lombardy, more than five times as much in Michele Emiliano's Puglia (26,013), triple that in Nicola Zingaretti's Lazio (15,259). Prosecutors concerned? Zero.
De Luca complained on TV, with a performance of his (imitated by Crozza), the "snatching of 300 million" from the Campania health system by the Northern regions. However, this emergency was denied in real time by Gabriella Di Lorenzo, a nurse from the Cotugno hospital in Naples, with a post on the Il Riformista website: «Nothing is true. I work at the Cotugno hospital and the thing we are verifying is that Covid no longer has the effects it had in March. People appear frightened, with a fever of 37.5, and as a rule they have to swab them, but in normal conditions they would be sent home with the prescription of an antipyretic every six hours, and that's it ».
The virologist Andrea Crisanti, who in the summer presented a project to the government of Giuseppe Conte and the CTS, says that behind the bass drum on the emergency there are also non-transparent economic interests, in addition to the numbers of the Civil Protection, now also says without mincing words. 400,000 tampons per day, with a cost of 2.5 euros per tampon, instead of the current average of 30 euros. Project ignored.
"Today we spend 4 million a day for tampons, and for some it is a very greedy business," said Crisanti in an interview. Unfortunately, it seems that De Luca has really taught the Conte government on waste. Matter in which, in truth, he had already advanced with bonus shots.
Extract from an article published on ItaliaOggi
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/covid-modello-de-luca-in-campania-funziona-davvero/ on Sat, 17 Oct 2020 07:50:48 +0000.