ROME -- A top World Health Organization official has strongly denied making false statements to Italian prosecutors about a spiked U.N. report into Italy’s coronavirus response, doubling down on his assertions in court documents obtained by The Associated Press. Prosecutors are investigating the huge COVID-19 death toll in the Lombardy province of Bergamo, which was hit hardest when Italy became the epicenter of the pandemic in Europe last year. The ensuing scandal revealed that Italy’s pandemic preparedness plan hadn’t been updated since 2006, and the report’s disappearance suggested that WHO had spiked it to spare the Italian government criticism and potential liability. Guerra also noted that before he left the ministry to join the WHO in 2017, he wrote the then-minister alerting her that Italy needed a new pandemic preparedness plan. In his response to prosecutors, Guerra questioned the authenticity of the partial WhatsApp chats and said they lacked necessary context to be understood.

Source: ABC News May 11, 2021 06:02 UTC