Covid-19 e Bioetica. Emergenza sanitaria ed equa distribuzione delle cure

COVID-19 and bioethics. Health, Emergency and Fair Distribution of Care. During the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic and in full health emergency, some opinions of local and national ethics committees were promptly published, including the SIAARTI 2020 document. The principles that generally unite these pronouncements are the following: since every person has the right to treatment appropriate to his clinical condition, the State cannot unequally distribute the chances of survival and the risk of death based on considerations of the duration or quality of life of the patient in question. Instead, the State must limit itself, but it is no small thing, to recommending saving as many lives as possible. As is well known, Covid-19 was dramatically changing the frame of the health situation of the numerous countries involved, putting the entire system in crisis far beyond the individual sectors that concern the specific treatments required by the infected. In such scenario the need for care goes far beyond the ability of a health system to cope with it: what should be the criteria for an equitable distribution of scarce resources? The article illustrates the answers provided in the bioethical debate on Covid-19 and analyzes especially the age criterion as a principle of access to care in the context of scarce resources.