Italian prosecutors have launched an investigation into health officials in Sicily who allegedly deliberately manipulated pandemic statistics to keep the southern region out of restrictive measures.
Two senior officials and an IT employee have been placed under house arrest, while the regional director of the Institute of Public Health, Ruggero Razza, has resigned after being questioned by the prosecution.
Investigators suspect that data about the pandemic, sent to the Ministry of Health for the period November-March have been manipulated at least 40 times.
The purpose of the manipulation of the statistics is suspected to have been to avoid the inclusion of Sicily in the map of red zones - according to the categorizations of anti-COVID measures, the red zones are forced to be placed under curfew and movement ban. Sicily currently remains a medium-sized orange area.
Police raided the offices of health authorities in Palermo while seizing phones, documents and other electronic devices. The first inspections showed that dozens of positive tests were reported to the ministry as negative.
Italy has suffered over 108 thousand victims from the spread of COVID-19 infection since last year. A total of 3.5 million cases were registered, of which about 2.9 were able to recover.