Gemmato corrects the shot on vaccines, but it is controversial. Letta and Calenda: “Resign”

“An undersecretary of health who denies vaccines cannot remain in office”. Net judgment is what Enrico Letta, secretary of the Democratic Party, entrusted Twitter a few hours after the video with the words of Marcello Gemmato went around the web. “I note that for a large part of the pandemic, Italy was first in terms of mortality and third in terms of lethality”, says the exponent of the Brothers of Italy as a guest of ReStart, replying that “we do not have the reverse burden of proof” to the journalist who asks him if it wouldn’t have been worse without vaccines. A few words but with an important meaning: once again the party of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni chooses to question the effectiveness of vaccines, which according to the entire international scientific community have reduced the risk of death from Covid-19 infection.

An ambiguity that the opposition has not let slip. So when around lunchtime Gemmato tries to straighten the shot by specifying that “vaccines are precious weapons against Covid”The controversy has now erupted. Together with Letta, Carlo Calenda also intervenes: “He must resign. An undersecretary of Health who does not distance himself from novax is definitely in the wrong place”, he writes on Twitter. There are several representatives of the dem and Azione-Italia Viva to fuel the pressure: from Senator Sandra Zampa, head of Health for the Democratic Party, to the group leaders of the Third Pole Raffaella Paita and Matteo Richetti. But the list of senators and deputies who have taken positions is much longer. “Embittered and worried” also says the former Lombard councilor Letizia Morattiwhich precisely because of the proximity of the government to the no-vax world broke with the junta led by the Northern League Attilio Fontana.

After a few hours the M5s also intervenes through the declaration of the senator Mariolina Castellonewho however avoids asking for the resignation and resizes the case by recalling the words of the premier during the confidence speech: “There is nothing more astonishing and painful than hearing the Undersecretary of Health Gemmato pronounce himself against the vaccine and spread unfounded information, however, contrary to what Meloni herself declared”.

There are those who ask the Minister of Health to clear the field of doubts. “We are waiting for a clear and strong position from Minister Schillaci after Gemmato’s statements on Covid-19 vaccines. Otherwise it is silent assent”, says the president of the Gimbe Foundation, Nino Cartabellotta.

The figure of Schillaci, former rector of Tor Vergata and former member of the scientific technical committee of the Higher Institute of Health, has so far proved unable to affect the ambiguous direction of the government. While as a doctor and professor he was in favor of both compulsory vaccination and the green pass, as a minister he approved the government’s ideological measures that wink at No vax without being able to either dissociate himself or fully support the theses of the Melons.

It is she who emerges weakened, the Prime Minister, who is in Bali today to participate in the G20 summit. There, the pandemic gave way to other international emergencies, but the position of international leaders on the subject is clear: vaccines are needed and the world cannot afford to fall back into a new wave of Covid-19.