Italians are seeing red over the Covid ‘Green Pass’

Following Emmanuel Macron’s example, the Italian Prime Minister, Mario Draghi, has announced the introduction of a ‘Green Pass’. Draghi’s initiative, which was announced at a press conference on 24 July and comes into effect on 6 August, has sparked protests all over Italy

The Green Pass will discriminate between Italians who are vaccinated and those who are not. Anyone who has not received their jabs, or cannot show a recent negative test or that they have recovered from Covid in the past six months, will be denied access to indoor restaurants, museums, cinemas and exhibitions. Further restrictions under discussion would prevent them from access to trains and ferries. There are also plans to limit entry into schools and universities to the vaccinated.

What has particularly angered people is Draghi’s position on vaccinating teenagers. When one journalist asked him what he thought about the suggestion from Matteo Salvini, the head of the Northern League, that teenagers shouldn’t be encouraged to get jabbed at the moment, his response was that ‘any invitation to avoid vaccination is simply an invitation to get sick and die’. Many Italians want to know why their Prime Minister is recommending that they vaccinate over-12s when northern European countries such as the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Sweden have decided against it until more data becomes available.

Just over half of Italians are fully vaccinated and 11 per cent have had one dose. An aggressive media campaign has been launched to urge more to take the jab. La Repubblica, one of the major national newspapers, even ran a headline saying: ‘Now is the time to hunt down the unvaccinated!’ A virologist named Roberto Burioni, who appears regularly on television, has referred to the unvaccinated as ‘rats, who will be obliged to close themselves in their holes’.

Such diatribes have inflamed Italy.