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Coronavirus: Italy cancels five Serie A football matches amid outbreak

Five Italian Serie-A weekend matches including Sunday's clash between Juventus and Inter Milan have been postponed due to the coronavirus, the Italian football league said Saturday.

Published: 29 February 2020 17:38 CET

Coronavirus: Italy cancels five Serie A football matches amid outbreak

Milan's San Siiro stadum has been closed to the public. Photo: AFP

Other matches called off are AC Milan v Genoa, Parma v SPAL, Sassuolo v Brescia, all scheduled for Sunday, and Saturday's clash between Udinese and Fiorentina, the league said in a statement.

The games will be played on May 13 and the Italian Cup final, scheduled to take place on that day, will be put back to May 20, the league said.

The matches had been scheduled to be played behind closed doors.

Italy is the country hardest hit by the virus outbreak, with over 1,000 cases and 29 deaths – mostly in regions in the north.

The decision had been taken in response to the “exceptional circumstances concerning protection of public health and security”, the league said.

Last weekend, four Serie-A matches were postponed with the Hellas Verona v Cagliari and the Torino v Parma matches to be played on March 11.

No date has been fixed as yet for the Atalanta v Sassuolo and Inter Milan v Sampdoria games.

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Former Italian PM faces investigation over Covid response

Prosecutors in Bergamo, the northern city that was one of the epicentres of the coronavirus outbreak in Europe, targeted Conte after wrapping up their three-year inquiry, according to media reports.

Conte, now president of the populist Five Star movement, was prime minister from 2018 to 2021 and oversaw the initial measures taken to halt the spread of what would become a global pandemic.

Investigating magistrates suspect that Conte and his government underestimated the contagiousness of Covid-19 even though available data showed that cases were spreading rapidly in Bergamo and the surrounding region.

They note that in early March 2020 the government did not create a “red zone” in two areas hit hardest by the outbreak, Nembro and Alzano Lombardo, even though security forces were ready to isolate the zone from the rest of the country.

READ ALSO: ‘Not offensive’: Italian minister defends Covid testing rule for China arrivals

Red zones had already been decreed in late February for around a dozen other nearby municipalities including Codogno, the town where the initial Covid case was reportedly found.

Conte’s health minister Roberto Speranza as well as the president of the Lombardy region, Attilio Fontana, are also under investigation, the reports said.

Bergamo prosecutors allege that according to scientific experts, earlier quarantines could have saved thousands of lives.

Conte, quoted by Il Corriere della Sera and other media outlets, said he was “unworried” by the inquiry, saying his government had acted “with the utmost commitment and responsibility during one of the most difficult moments of our republic.”

READ ALSO: Italy’s constitutional court upholds Covid vaccine mandate as fines kick in

Similar cases have been lodged against officials elsewhere, alleging that authorities failed to act quickly enough against a virus that has killed an estimated 6.8 million people worldwide since early 2020.

In January, France’s top court threw out a case against former health minister Agnes Buzyn, a trained doctor, over her allegedly “endangering the lives of others” by initially playing down the severity of Covid-19.

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