Beneficence and equity: how the covid-19 pandemic exposed our weaknesses in Italy

2020

How did Italy face the issue of allocating beds in Intensive Care Units and ventilators during the COVID-19 outbreak? At the beginning of the epidemic, the Italian Society of Anesthesia Analgesia Resuscitation and Intensive Care issued recommendations that sparked a heated debate. Later, the National Bioethics Committee, the ethical advisory board of the Government, has issued a document, which recognizes that the only admissible criterion to employ in a "pandemic emergency triage" is a clinical criterion. The document actually doesn’t address some core ethical issues, leaving many unanswered questions.