Tackling the Covid-19 pandemic. The Italian national health service in a comparative perspective

The article deals with the issue of public health policy strategies adopted by various countries and, as regards Italy, by the two Northern regions that were first affected by the Covid-19, Lombardy and Veneto, during the first pandemic wave of winter-spring 2020. In the first part, the three main public health policy strategies to counter the Covid-19 pandemic that emerged from the debate among public health experts at an international level are outlined. On this basis, some paradigmatic cases are identified that exemplify the conditions and consequences in terms of morbidity and mortality that these strategies have entailed. The second part focuses on the Italian case and on the differences that emerge, in terms of mortality, in the two regions (Lombardy and Veneto) as a result, among other things, of the health policy choices made by the respective regional governments. The hypothesis that we intend to support is that these policies and their effects in terms of mortality are the reflection of a plurality of epidemiological, environmental and clinical factors, but also the result of the interaction between the specific structuring of national/regional health care systems (path dependence) and the choices made to counter the pandemic emergency (agency).