Domenico Arcuri, 56 years old, tread the parquet of one of the Civil Protection operating rooms under the giant screen with the count of dead and healed. The ear glued to the phone, at one point the government commissioner on the emergency blurts out: “I’m from Reggio Calabria and in Reggio we don’t change our mind easily!”.
Commissioner, when you accepted the job, did you expect it to be so hard?
“I thought it was going to be very hard, and it is. What I never imagined so strongly is government support. I don’t feel alone or abandoned. The reasons why it is complex have to do with the organization of our state and the meeting-clash between the emergency and those who assist you from the talk show seats “.
–
He said a couple of Sundays ago that from 2 May, citizens could buy masks at 50 cents in 50 thousand pharmacies. At least until yesterday’s deal, it didn’t happen. Pharmacists and manufacturers have accused you of wanting to force them to work at a loss.
«How do they lose? I said that if distributors buy at a price greater than 0.38, the difference is restored. If anything it happened that they did not have the certified masks they claimed to have. But let’s start from the beginning. Upon my arrival in mid-March the supply was very tiring: we come to the crisis without a national industry in the sector. The place where masks are made is China. In addition, we have a regulatory mountain of certificates, validations, bureaucracies. At that point we plunge into a devastating trade war. “
–
With other European countries?
«So yes, now no longer only Europeans. Italy launches an incentive in five days to promote the birth of a national industry, in fact today 108 companies are converting or starting to produce. In addition, I start looking for who makes machines to produce the masks. And we start to get supplies. Do you know the journey of the mask? It must be done in China, then put on a white list for export, then you have to find a cargo for Italy, at the customs there is a first verification for the certification, then the Inail or the Health Institute must give other certifications. Finally you have to distribute them. I also fielded the army. Meanwhile, speculators sell non-compliant products at newsstands at absurd prices or try to offer them to the government and the regions. And when they fail, they find the friend who says on TV that Arcuri is a criminal, because the masks are not found “.
–
They criticized her because with the price blocked at 50 cent she risks killing the same national industry that tries to give birth. Certainly by now in full phase 2 internal production is a small thing, don’t you think?
«The production cost is 8 cents. The Imma of the Vacchi family and the Fameccanica of the Angelini group started producing machines for masks, working seven days a week. FCA and Luxottica give us the factories to make them work. All refunded at cost price. Those 108 companies are starting to get up to speed: it is a process that started in early April, now we are in early May and national production covers about 10-15% of the needs. Not bad. By the end of September it will be 100%. Immediately I will give another 10 million masks to the distributors of pharmacies from our stock so that they are also there in 50 cent, not only in supermarkets. Those who criticize 50 cents have a double morale: for those who are indignant live it is never a problem to find a mask for 5 euros. For their porter’s son, yes. ‘
–
What is the national need for masks today?
«Thirty, 40 million a day. We have distributed 4 million per day in phase 1, 7 million now. And we have enough in stock, plus enough orders, to cover the needs as domestic production increases. The next step will be the agreement with the tobacconists, but we no longer need other supplies. ”
–
The specifications for the provision of serological tests on the presence of antibodies were so stringent that in the end only one company met the conditions, the American Abbott. And not everyone considers his test the most reliable. The fact is that we are only leaving now.
«The Ministry of Health asks me on April 15th to launch the tender. I ask the technical-scientific committee to give me the criteria and two days later, on April 17, I ban the tender giving time until 23. I sign the award 9 days after opening the call. If we are only starting now with tests on a population sample, it is because we had to wait for a government decree that would solve the privacy problems. It arrived last weekend. But none of this means that Abbott will be the exclusive supplier for Italy, in fact it is not already. It must also be said that today there is no 100% safe serological test in the world “.
–
Il Corriere has created a newsletter on the virus – and phase 2. It’s free: you sign up here
–
On April 15th, after more than a month of lockdown, isn’t it too late to start moving on serological tests?
“The speed of the search was frantic, the border was not the same in March, it will not be in June. And the test is important for phase 2. It is certainly not an immunity license, it serves to know how the virus moved. A fortiori, tenders between suppliers at the lowest price should be avoided, as certain regions do, and so-called rapid tests should be avoided. The clinics charge unsuspecting citizens for tests that do nothing. ”
–
Why have you launched the offer for the purchase of buffer reagents for only two days?
«2.7 million tampons have already been made in Italy. According to Finddx.org data, it is the largest country in the world that has made the most swabs in relation to the population: 4,422 per 100,000 inhabitants, much more than Germany, France, Great Britain, the USA, Spain. The problem is that the reagents in the world today have become very scarce and we need another 5 million doses. As usual there are Chinese ones, with questions about quality. Even a joint European bid offer has not paid off. “
–
For the app the call is from March 24, but we are not there yet …
«The app has undergone a complex analysis of privacy. Today that app is an alert, a device that alerts. He does a job that is now done by interviewing every infected person. The necessary jump is when the app connects to the national health system. But there you fall into the quarrel between security and privacy ».
–
Phase 2 begins without many of the principals that would be needed. What did you find more difficult, finding the necessary materials abroad or finding your way around the rooms of Rome?
«I don’t need a navigator to find my way around Roman traffic. I find it more difficult to read Chinese than the real or presumed certificates of the masks. But I would like to say that the Italians, all of them, are reacting well to the emergency. We were the second country in the world for infections when we entered lockdown, now we are the fifth. In the meantime, we have sent 4,403 other ICU equipment and now we have less than 900 patients. I am proud to serve my country and I am sure that the results of phase 1 will replicate in phase 2 ».
—
May 13, 2020 (change May 13, 2020 | 23:00)
© RESERVED REPRODUCTION
–
