Italy Begins Analyzing Its COVID-19 Outbreak

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed challenges inherent to the country of Italy's decentralized healthcare system, stated a new editorial published in The Lancet on October 15, 2020. During the first months of 2020, Italy had the highest number of COVID-19 cases in Europe and in the world.

Lombardy, with a population of 10 million people, was the region of Italy hit the hardest by the pandemic. According to the Italian Ministry of Health's COVID-19 dashboard, the Lombardy region in northern Italy reported one-third of all SARS-CoV-2 cases and about 50% of all COVID-19 related fatalities in Italy.

The Regional Council of Lombardy has now formed a COVID-19 investigative commission within the regional assembly to analyze the sequence of events and the specific choices that led to so many infections and deaths in a region with an extremely high standard of healthcare.