The governor of the Italian region with the largest percentage of residents older than 65 has apologised for a tweet which contended the elderly aren't indispensable to the country's production, as Italy battles Covid-19.
The newspaper Corriere della Sera said Liguria Governor Giovanni Toti, in a meeting Sunday with government ministers, had advocated limiting movement outside the home for those older than 70 in a bid to avoid a generalised, nationwide lockdown amid surging spread of coronavirus infections.
"For as much as every single Covid-19 victim pains us, we must keep in mind this data: Only yesterday among the 25 deaths in Liguria, 22 were very elderly patients," Toti tweeted on Sunday.
They are "persons for the most part in retirement, not indispensable to the productive effort" of the economy, tweeted Toti, who is 52. Nearly 29 percent of Liguria's residents are older than 65, compared to a nationwide percentage of just under 23 percent.
Maurizio Gasparri, a 64-year-old senator, slammed Toti's assessment of the elderly's value as "delirious." Apologising for what he termed "misunderstandings", Toti later claimed his tweet was "badly extrapolated" and blamed it on an error by his social media manager.
