WHO accused of burying report about Italy’s coronavirus mismanagement

A nurse comforts another as they change shifts in a Lombardy hospital back in March

Credit: PAOLO MIRANDA /AFP 

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has been accused of covering up one of its own reports into Italy’s early mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic. 

The report, ‘An Unprecedented Challenge: Italy’s first response to Covid-19’, found that a failure to keep pandemic planning up to date led to the ‘chaotic’ response by hospitals during the first wave. 

The report was published on the WHO’s website on May 13 but taken down the next day. 

The lead scientist on the report, which was funded by Kuwait in order to better prepare its own response, told the Guardian on Friday that he had warned WHO officials that attempts might be made to suppress the document because of high-level conflicts of interest. 

Ranieri Guerra, the WHO’s assistant director for strategic initiatives, requested that the report be taken down, the Guardian reported after seeing documents from an ongoing investigation by Italian prosecutors. 

Mr Guerra was one of the top officials at Italy’s health ministry from 2014 to 2017, when the country’s pandemic plan was meant to have been updated. 

The report’s authors claim it could have helped save lives in countries like Kuwait which lagged behind Italy in the contagion curve. 

Italian prosecutors have summoned health experts to testify but their requests have been blocked by the WHO, according to Italian media reports. The health body is now in a dispute with Italy’s foreign ministry over the matter.

Mr Guerra has yet to reply to the allegations.   

Any evidence that the WHO may have conspired with Italian officials to unreasonably block the report could have an impact on an ongoing investigation to hold current and former health ministry officials to account for failing to provide updated guidance to hospitals in northern Italy.

Back in March and April, Italy’s northern regions were taken by surprise by the rapid spread of the virus and became the epicentre of Europe’s pandemic, with peaks of more than 900 deaths a day.

Health ministers and government officials in office dating back to 2013 risk being brought to trial if Bergamo prosecutors can show pandemic preparedness was hampered by hospitals using outdated protocols that were supposed to have been revised by previous administrations in case of a possible health emergency.