Coronavirus: Prosecutors grill Italy’s PM over two-week delay to order lockdown

Italian prosecutors are questioning prime minister Giuseppe Conte over the alleged lack of lockdowns in two towns in the north that have been hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic. Doctors and virologists have said the two-week delay in quarantining Alzano and Nembro allowed coronavirus to spread in Lombardy’s Bergamo province, which saw a 571 per cent increase in excess deaths in March compared with the average of the previous five years. Lead prosecutor Maria Cristina Rota arrived with a team of aides at the premier’s office in Rome, Palazzo Chigi.