Education Minister Valeria
Fedeli and Health Minister Beatrice Lorenzin on Wednesday wrote
to Veneto Governor Luca Zaia to urge him to rethink his
government's moratorium until 2019 on presenting vaccines
documentation for school admission.
Earlier in the day Paolo Romani and Renato Brunetta, the
Lower House and Senate whips for Silvio Berlusconi's
centre-right Forza Italia (FI) party, appealed to Zaia to comply
with central government's legislation making vaccines obligatory
for school admission.
"Each additional stall in vaccine coverage represents serious
harm to our community, above all the weakest individuals," the
whips said in a joint statement.
Rightwing populist Northern League (LN) leader Matteo Salvini
said he backed the stance of Veneto's LN governor Zaia and
rejected the move by the whips from three-time premier
Berlusconi's FI, long his ally.
Saying that the two FI whips should "deal with other issues",
Salvini said "Zaia is getting praise from many associations:
vaccinating (one's children) must be a free choice, not a Soviet
obligation".
Salvini said "I wouldn't like Italy to have been chosen as a
guinea pig by pharmaceutical companies".
Zaia has said that his regional government has broken no
rules after it granted parents a moratorium until 2019 to
present vaccines documentation for school admission.
The government is considering challenging the move, which
effectively undermines its legislation.
"We went and carefully read the national law and my directors
saw that it's written inside - a moratorium is possible," Zaia
said in an interview published in Wednesday's edition of La
Repubblica.
He added that his executive has launched an appeal to "defend
its own law on vaccines, which has existed for 10 years and
works".
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