What made Italy’s wealthiest region so vulnerable to coronavirus?

Did private healthcare hamper Lomabardy's response to the pandemic?

A medical worker stretches a patient from an Italian Red Cross ambulance into an intensive care unit set up in a sports center outside the San Raffaele hospital in Milan, on March 23, 2020 during the COVID-19 new coronavirus pandemic. (Photo by Miguel MEDINA / AFP) (Photo by MIGUEL MEDINA/AFP via Getty Images)

Until a few months ago the healthcare system in Lombardy, Italy’s wealthiest region, was widely admired. The system was described as the second most efficient in the world, with an annual turnover of €7.8 billion. Thousands of people from Italy and beyond flocked to its hospitals each year to avail themselves of its doctors and pioneering medical research. “Be healthy,” read an online brochure for the region, “come to Lombardy.”

When an outbreak of a new coronavirus in China was reported in January, public officials were confident in the system’s capacity to respond. “Don’t worry yourselves,” said the Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte, on 3 February. “There’s no point in predicting an epidemic or pandemic, because the system is ready for every emergency.”