Italy closes investigation alleging COVID lockdown failures

Italian prosecutors have closed a COVID-19 investigation that accuses officials, including a former premier and a regional governor, of wrongdoing for failing to extend a lockdown zone in the early days of the pandemic to the northern city of Bergamo and adjacent industrial valleys.

The case now goes to a magistrate in Bergamo to decide whether to indict more than a dozen suspects identified by prosecutors, including then Premier Giuseppe Conte, former Health Minister Roberto Speranza and Lombardy regional Gov. Atillo Fontana.

Fontana’s lawyer said that he doesn’t expect his client to be among those indicted, adding that “Fontana was always questioned as an interested party,” not as a suspect.

The investigation alleges errors were made in not extending a “red zone,” initially imposed on a limited number of towns in the neighboring Lombardy and Veneto regions, to Bergamo as the number of deaths there skyrocketed.