More than 700,000 foreigners in Italy are “invisible” in the eyes of the country’s COVID-19 vaccination crusade and are denied the legality of vaccines, a senior public official warned.
This “creates an inaccessible people bubble” through the vaccination campaign, said Gianfranco Costanzo, director of fitness at the Ministry of Health, Migration and Poverty at the National Institute of Health.
“To discharge collective immunity, if we exclude a significant component of the population living in Italy from the proposed vaccines, we damage individual fitness on the one hand while creating a challenge for collective fitness on the other,” he told ANSA. Italian News Agency, 25 May.
Italian law promises essential and emergency clinical and hospital care, especially in the prevention, diagnosis and control of infectious diseases, adding vaccines, to all Italian and foreign citizens who provide on Italian territory, even the undocumented or not. Comply with border access regulations and apartments.
However, online booking systems for COVID-19 vaccines, controlled through other regions of Italy, require a tax code and a fitness insurance card number, Costanzo said. Some regions even require other needs, such as a virtual identity code or a qualified cell phone number. “The exception is the Emilia-Romagna region,” he added.
“With such degrees of access, it is transparent that teams of foreign nationals who have fitness insurance cards or other codes are being cut off,” he said. “The framework of regional reserve platforms is distressing. “
Costanzo stated that others he refused include: more than 700,000 people from non-EU countries living in Italy lately, but without a health insurance card or tax code number; several thousand legal European citizens in Italy who do not have an Italian fitness insurance card, in some cases because it would require escaping the fitness formula of their home country; and others with expired cards or those with old but valid codes not identified through the online formula.
Dr Salvatore Geraci, head of Caritas Roma’s fitness services, told the Catholic News Service on 27 May: “Just because a user is not registered in the fitness formula in Italy does not mean that they are not entitled to vaccination. “this fact is not taken into account when designing the site or setting up the booking formula.
Caritas Italia and other organizations belonging to an on-the-fly organization on immigration and fitness had already reported the challenge in a letter to Roberto Speranza, Italy’s fitness minister, in early February, shortly after the launch of the national vaccination system, he said.
In that letter, they warned the minister of government that he opposed the large number of others who were in danger of being left out because of the operation of the formula and suggested that they seek a solution.
Dr. Geraci, former president of the Italian Society for Migration Medicine and who has spent 30 years running in the field of physical care for migrants, said there had been no government reaction.
“There has to be someone who tells the regions how they deserve to proceed, or regions have to take the lead and do anything for themselves,” he said, but for now, the two sides are swinging between them about who deserves to do things. . first step with a new procedure.
Meanwhile, he said Caritas Italia is carrying out promotional activities and called for a technical solution for the site so that no fitness cards or tax code numbers were needed.
Caritas is supporting those waiting and proposes that their centres be used as possible places of vaccination, he said.
Caritas, he said, is seeking to convince the regional government of fitness that they will eventually have to look for espresso segments of the population to vaccinate because they cannot use the online site, for example, those who do not have the Internet, those who cannot browse or perceive the online process, homeless gypsies, the homeless, the mentally ill, the confined at home , socially excluded and drug addicts.
Caritas’ local staff is compiling lists of as many other vulnerable people as you can imagine in their communities so that when the region is ready, they know who they want to help, he added.
Dr. Geraci said vaccinating everyone is a matter of “social justice,” not just charity.
“If we have to ensure the fitness of all,” he said, “we will have to ensure the fitness of each and every individual, even the most fragile. “
COVID-19, Italy, Vaccines, Vatican
Carol Glatz writes for Catholic News Service.