Draghi unveils Covid strategy as Italy braces for tourist drought

Mario Draghi, Italy’s new prime minister, this week launched his strategy to tackle the country’s increasingly complex Covid crisis and its economic consequences. He has put the Italian Army’s senior logistician, Lt General Francesco Paolo Figliuolo, in charge of the vaccination programme, and appointed the head of the Superior Health Institute, Silvio Brusaferro, to lead the science initiative.

The approach has a distinctly Anglo-Saxon, pragmatic feel. Draghi, a former head of the ECB, is a self-confessed anglophile, and his no-nonsense approach to his new job and the crisis betrays his love of British theatre and writing. His sentences are short and his public appearances brief – he has left it to Brusaferro and Figliuolo and their teams to make the press briefings and presentations – much in the manner of the Downing Street Covid updates. Draghi himself is on record as believing ‘Italian politicians talk too much.’

As Draghi unveiled the new plan, Italy’s Covid death count ticked up to over 100,000. This is the fifth highest death rate per head of population in the world. The vaccination programme has been poor and patchy to date. By 5 March just over five million Italians had received a first vaccination. At this time, the UK had recorded more than 21 million first vaccinations and more than a million and a half second doses.

Italy also has had no indigenous manufacture of any type of Covid vaccination – and had not expected to start making its own until September at the earliest.

This has led to the ban on the export of a batch of AstraZeneca vaccines ordered by Australia. Rather lamely, the Italian authorities said they were ‘conforming to EU policy on orders and exports of vaccines,’ pointing to an alleged shortfall of delivery to EU programmes by AstraZeneca. This all brought muted derision from mainstream Italian media commentary. ‘Why do it for so little?’ was one comment. The Australian order was only for some 250,000 doses.

Draghi said several aspects of the new wave of Covid in Italy were alarming. In many regions, despite a carefully orchestrated lockdown, the R ratio of infections was going up. Worst hit, surprisingly, are young adults of working age.

Italy has banned travel between the 20 regions of the peninsula and islands. Bars and cafés open until 6.00pm. An elaborate ‘traffic light’ system of levels of infection has been used in different regions, and is likely to continue. The government has said it expects different levels of lockdown and travel ban to last at least until the autumn. However, places of entertainment, cinemas and theatres, are allowed to open either in full or with heavy restriction by the end of the month. Draghi himself has refused to rule out a further heavy lockdown this summer.

The main culprit is what Italians like to call ‘the British variant’ – meaning a version of the South African mutation. This week the government says this accounts for 54 per cent of new infections in the past week. Unlike Greece and Portugal there has been no mention of opening up a ‘holiday corridor’ for British tourists and visitors with proof of vaccination against Covid.

The likelihood of a second year with virtually no tourist season will be devastating for the Italian economy. Draghi is wrestling with a debt level of 160 per cent of GDP. He has handed out a contract to the McKinsey consultancy to model how to use the €200 billion Covid recovery funding from the EU. This has provoked controversy and criticism that the new government, with one of the most trusted bankers in the country, Daniele Franco, now as Economy Ministry at the helm, cannot do the work for itself. There are also fears that the EU may down terms and conditions for the deployment of the fund – and that this could mean the German lobby at the Commission insisting on austerity as they have in the past with Greece. This very issue brought down the coalition government of Giuseppe Conte earlier this year.

One piece of breaking news about Italy’s Covid strategy threatens an even bigger EU geopolitical row. Yesterday a joint announcement by Moscow’s RDIF sovereign wealth fund said an agreement had been made for a Swiss-based pharmaceutical firm, Adienne, to start manufacturing the Russian Sputnik V vaccine at a plant in Lugano in northern Italy. Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic have all declared they are ordering the Sputnik V jab. However, the European Medicines Agency EMA has so far withheld approval of the Russian vaccine for the EU.

The head of the RDIF, Kirill Dimitriev, has told Russian state television that his fund has struck deals for Sputnik manufacture locally in Spain, France and Germany.

For their part, Adienne Pharma and Biotech have been reluctant to give much detail about their Lugano operation. Production is expected to start in June, with an output of ten million vaccines by the end of the year – according to the Russian-Italian Chamber of Commerce in Italy.

Draghi himself has refrained from commenting – his spokesman said the Italian Prime Minister urged the EU to ‘pursue all possible options to buy vaccines approved by the EMA’. However, last week an EMA official ‘urged EU members from refraining approval of the Sputnik V vaccine at national government level.’ The Kremlin spokesman, Dimitri Peskov, called the EMA official’s remark “inappropriate at the very least.”

None of this appears to have damaged the surprisingly cordial relations between Boris Johnson and Mario Draghi. In a phone call last week, Boris Johnson congratulated Draghi on the new job and underlined the areas in which he expected to cement ties between the two countries this year – especially as they share the chair for the COP-26 climate change conference in Glasgow in November.

They stressed common goals and support in two specific areas – the drive to get a peace settlement in Libya, and the Tempest Future Air Combat System project, in which Italy and Sweden – through Saab – are major UK partners. In Libya, where Italy has appointed Pasquale Ferrara as super-envoy, the Italians are trying to thwart the almost personal diplomacy of Emmanuel Macron to back his particular clients to run the new cross-party government, and support Egypt against Turkish influence. Ferrara favours a collegiate approach, whereas Macron believes he is in charge of the EU’s foreign policy, according to critics.

The support for the Tempest system is growing in importance by the day as the Lockheed Martin F-35 is regarded increasingly unaffordable to run by allies buying the plane, including Britain, Japan, Italy, Australia and the Netherlands. Recently, the head of the US Air Force, General Charles Q Brown, has queried its general affordability given the high wear on F35s already with the USAF and the high costs of maintenance. He compared it to a Ferrari ‘which you cannot afford for weekly use, but take out on Sundays.”

Britain is forecast to be cutting the order of F-35s from 138 to 48 or fewer in next week’s strategy and defence review. This news received a round of applause from the unlikely quarter of the parliamentarians of the 5 Star Movement, the most leftwing but largest party in the new Draghi coalition.

The caucus of Senators and Deputies yesterday called on the Minister of Defence, Guerrini, to ‘review Italy’s orders for the F-35 in line with the British.’ At the same time, they asked the minister to boost the commitment to Tempest, “in which we participate as a first level partner through our companies, Leonardo, Avio Aero and Mbda Italia.”