Agostino Airaudo, 86, died of the coronavirus on March 21. Ninety minutes earlier he had received an SMS telling him that, after weeks of waiting, he had got an appointment for a vaccine, APA reports citing Reuters.
Ten days later, his 82-year-old wife Michela also died of the disease.
Unlike many other European countries, Italy did not give automatic precedence to its army of pensioners when it launched its inoculation campaign in December, even though they were bearing the brunt of the disease.
The failure to provide swifter protection has cost thousands of lives, experts say, and stoked anger about a fragmented health system under which regions take most of the decisions and the central government has struggled to impose a clear strategy.
“People could have been saved,” said Giorgio Airaudo, the son of Agostino and Michela, and the head of Italy’s powerful FIOM metalworkers’ union in the northern region of Piedmont.
“As soon as the vaccines arrived, there was no justification for not giving priority to fragile people and the elderly...,” he told Reuters by telephone.
“But this did not happen. The government made suggestions and each region did as they pleased.”
More than 110,000 people have died of COVID-19 in Italy, the world’s seventh highest tally. Their average age was 81, and 86% of them were 70 or over, data from the ISS national health institute shows.
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