ITALIAN Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said he will be questioned by prosecutors Friday over the way the coronavirus outbreak was handled in the northern Italian city of Bergamo, one of the areas worst hit by the epidemic.

“I am not at all worried,” Conte told reporters outside the his office in Rome.

“We will speak Friday and I will pass on all the facts I am aware of,” he said, adding that he was not under investigation himself.

The prosecutors want to know why those badly hit areas around Bergamo were not closed down early in the outbreak, and they have already questioned the regional governor of Lombardy, which includes Bergamo, and Lombardy’s health chief.

It came after 50 relatives of COVID-19 victims in Italy filed complaints Wednesday at the prosecutors’ office in Bergamo over the handling of the pandemic, the first such legal group action in the country.

Italy is one of the worst affected countries worldwide by the pandemic, having registered 235,763 infections and 34,114 deaths, according to data from the U.S.-based Johns Hopkins University.

“We don’t want revenge, we want justice,” said Stefano Fusco, 31, who created a group on Facebook to reach out to others in similar situations after his grandfather died of the virus in a care home in March.

The complaints were filed at the prosecutors’ office in Bergamo “because it has become the symbol of this tragedy, though they come from across the country,” Fusco said.

Bergamo prosecutors are conducting a wide-ranging investigation into the health crisis. Local families blame tardiness in enforcing a red zone, as well as years of cuts to healthcare across the northern Lombardy region.(CGTN)