An Italian doctor who defied COVID-19 restrictions to be rushed to hospital in an ambulance to carry out a life-saving operation on a female patient has been acquitted after prosecutors took him and two other medics to court.
Dr Gianluca Iob, a vascular surgeon, carried out the operation last April (2020) in the Parini hospital in Italy’s Aosta Valley region despite being told to self-isolate after testing positive for COVID-19.
He was then prosecuted together with two other doctors even though it later transpired that the positive test was false, and he was not infected. Prosecutors argued that he had not known that, and that he had broken the law by ignoring the quarantine.
Dr Iob and Pier Eugenio Nebiolo, Iob’s superior and the health director of the Aosta Valley Local Health Authority, were prosecuted for ignoring the restrictions and deciding to go ahead with the operation.
Dr Iob was taken to the hospital to perform the operation by ambulance, which also drove him home again after the procedure had been completed.
Following the successful operation, an investigation was launched into Dr Iob, Pier Eugenio Nebiolo, and Luca Cavoretto, the person in charge of the emergency services hotline.
After the operation, it turned out that the test that gave Dr Iob the positive result was part of a batch of ‘false-positives’.
The prosecutor claimed that Dr Iob and the two other suspects had violated the COVID-19 restriction put in place by the Deputy Mayor of Aosta.
They were ordered to pay a EUR-5,000 (GBP-4,198) fine but they refused to pay and asked for a trial instead.
Judge Maurizio D’Abrusco ruled in favour of the defendants and said that no crime had been committed.
Corrado Bellora, the lawyer representing the defendants, said: “My clients took on their responsibilities and saved the life of a woman.
“There are three doctors who should be thanked, and should not have been on trial. They acted to save a person who was in grave danger. From the beginning, we said that this trial had to end with the acquittal of all three.”
