Italy Says 'Arrivederci' To The Unvaccinated
- Details
- Published: Thursday, 27 January 2022 07:47
- Written by Guy Tuggle
- Hits: 1469
As pressure mounts in some quarters for a pause in plans in the UK to dismiss health and social care workers who have failed to avail themselves of Covid-19 vaccinations, in Italy suspension notices have been issued to 1,900 unvaccinated doctors and dentists.
This represents 0.4% of the registrants of the country’s Federation of Physicians and Dentists.
The status of a further 30,000 is in abeyance because they have not ‘completed’ their course of vaccinations, which includes the booster, a situation complicated by the number of professionals who have had to delay their jabs because they have tested positive for covid, are recovering from the illness, or have other health related complications.
Italy sounded a global alarm bell for Covid when early in 2020, an outbreak in the Northwest area of Lombardy saw thousands of people fall victim to the illness. The country has a high population of elderly, with life expectancy of 83.71 years placing it seventh in the world and from the onset it was clear that the elderly were highly vulnerable.
It was dramatic the images of Italy’s well-funded and well-equipped hospitals struggling to cope with a relentless conveyor belt of critically ill patients in need of ventilators that triggered many governments around the world to wake up to the threat coming their way.
Italy may have been a few weeks behind the UK in launching its vaccination programme but its governments at national and regional level never shied away from taking tough decisions to contain the spread, imposing national and regional lockdowns and forbidding travel not only from one town to another, but also from one part of a town to another. Police roadblocks were deployed to enforce the rules.
Italy has also legislated to require all health workers, police, teachers, armed forces and care workers to be fully vaccinated up to and including the booster. The country’s over-50s are also required to be fully jabbed to obtain their ‘health pass’. Those who aren’t risk fines up to 600 euros and without the pass are not allowed on trains and buses, to use gyms and, perhaps most seriously for Italians, to dine out including at al fresco tables.
Filippo Anelli, President of Italy’s Federation of Physicians and Dentists declared in a statement that the suspension from work measures were “not meant to be punitive. The aim is, as the law says, to protect public health and maintain adequate conditions of safety in providing care”.
You need to be logged in to leave comments.
Report