The preliminary hearing regarding the 11 Covid deaths and numerous infections that occurred in March 2020 in the Cardiology department of the Santissima Annunziata hospital lasted three and a half hours yesterday in the court in Sassari.
In the previous session, the prosecutor Paolo Piras requested the indictment, on charges of multiple manslaughter and culpable epidemic, for Fiorenzo Delogu, director of the Office of Hygiene and Public Health, Giorgio Steri, general director of ATS and Bruno Contu, director of the facility. While Steri, defended by the lawyer Guido Manca di Bitti, recalled the difficulty of obtaining personal protective equipment and the deserted tenders in this sense, Contu, assisted by the lawyer Nicola Satta, focused on the measures taken to combat the epidemic.
Even before February 21, 2020, the day in which patient 1 with Covid was identified in Codogno, the Sassari hospital, Contu reports, had adopted a plan to contain the disease and the outbreaks and which included safety and triage paths as well as a tent to isolate potential patients. A program drawn up among other things according to the indications given by the head of the Infectious Diseases department Sergio Babudieri and adapted to the emergency underway shortly after the Ebola case discovered in Sassari.
In essence, the top figures had already moved with practical indications aimed at containing the spread of the disease. Contu has so far responded to 4 of the 26 charges brought against him and will resume clarifying his position in the next hearing set by the preliminary hearing judge Gian Paolo Piana for October 9, while on the 16th of the same month the judge could decide on the referral to trial or acquittal.
