“There is no doubt” that the Minister of Health, Roberto Speranza, “should have been informed of this publication and this was a task assigned to Ranieri Guerra. Today we know that he did not carry out this task and therefore caused a diplomatic incident” . This was stated by Francesco Zambon, a former WHO official who wrote the report, later withdrawn, in which he defined the first Italian response to the Covid emergency as ‘improvised’, guest of ‘Half an hour more’ on Rai3. “I think the minister did not know about this report until it came out. It was not communicated to him by who was supposed to do it,” although it is “difficult to think that afterwards there was no involvement of the minister,” he said. Ranieri Guerra, deputy director of the World Health Organization, “has used WHO and also the Italian government as a shield to its own responsibilities, Zambon continued.
“The publication we launched a year ago was independent. For me it is a foregone conclusion that WHO must be able to do independent publications, but evidently it is not. In fact the report which was the only independent photograph on the Covid response one country has been withdrawn and there have been no others “, he concluded.