Coronavirus emergency, home delivery for vulnerable categories
A Memorandum of Understanding has been signed between the Civil Protection Department, Coop and Anci for the home delivery of essential goods. Volunteer organizations of civil protection are involved.
The MOU signed by the Department of Civil Protection, the National Association of Italian Consumer Cooperatives (Coop) and the National Association of Italian Municipalities (Anci) is addressed to elderly people, fragile people, quarantined people and all those unable to leave their homes to buy essential goods in order to facilitate at the local level the delivery service for the period of Covid- 19 epidemiological emergency.
Given the development of the epidemiological situation, its particularly contagious aspect and the increase in the number of cases on the national territory, it has been necessary to immediately take action to support the community and provide assistance to the population. In this sense, Coop's response immediately arrived, by involving a network of more than 80 consumer cooperatives on the Italian territory, including 7 large, 15 medium and about 60 small cooperatives, active in over 900 municipalities in Italy with more than 1,100 points of sale and more than 6.5 million consumer members.
The Civil Protection Department deemed the initiative praiseworthy, as a best practice in terms of assistance to the population by delivering goods at home for those requiring assistance during the COVID-19 emergency. With other protocols, the service may be requested by other retailers in order to strengthen the response to the current health emergency.
The annex to the MOU, applicable only in the municipalities where the Municipal Operations Centers (COCs) are active, specifies the categories of people to whom it is addressed, the methods of performing the activities and the payment methods for the delivery.