BRESCIA - Carlo Mosca, a doctor at a hosptical in Brescia has been accused of giving lethal doses of drugs to the ill in order to free beds for Covid patients. Mosca, 47, chief of the emergency room at the Montichiari hospital, is being accused of killing two Covid patients, though the prosecution has claimed he killed four in total, with other cases also under investigation. 

   Natale Bassi and Angelo Paletti, the two victims named by the prosecution, arrived at the hospital on March 20 and 22 last year, at the height of the first wave. Mosca supposedly administered them with a mix of succinylcholine and propofol, drugs used for intubation, one method of dealing with the symptoms of covid. However, if the patient is not then intubated the drugs cause respiratory failure, apnea and cardiac arrest. Neither of the patients were believed to have had particularly acute symptoms when they were admitted. Nurses noted that though none of them considered the cases to be “catastrophic or terminal”, they died within five or ten minutes of being alone with the doctor.

  In her statement, the prosecutor Angela Corvi said it is plausible that Mosca acted from a desire “to free not only bed places, but instrumental resources and the physical and emotional energy of his colleagues, the doctors and nurses and all the other staff on the emergency ward.” She continued however, that “one cannot think that he acted with the consent of the victims, or for some pious purpose, if only one consider that he administered them with a preparation that paralyses the muscles, but does not act in any way on the conscience, causing a painful death by suffocation… without the appropriate analgesic.” 

  The NAS, the branch of the Carabinieri concerned with public health, has revealed that the hospital’s orders of succinylcholine were up 70 per cent between January and April, though from November to March, the hospital only administered five intubations. Mosca, through his lawyers, has denied ever administering the drugs.

  Before the covid crisis, Mosca was thought of by his patients as a very caring and competent doctor. He was interviewed by Corriere della Sera at the height of the first wave, and that every day was a battle “to save as many lives as possible.” 

  His colleagues noted, however, that the pandemic seemed to have changed him. He seemed to be under much more stress, perhaps partially caused by living alone in a rented flat, in order to protect his seven year old daughter at home. 

  Nurses recall being asked to administer the drugs by Mosca, though refusing, considering it dangerous if they weren’t to be intubated. The nurses claim Mosca then administered the drugs himself, with one nurse at the time even taking a photo of empty vials of the drugs found in a bin. 

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