Silvio Berlusconi, 86 years old, was admitted this Wednesday to the ICU of the San Raffaele hospital in Milan due to breathing difficulties that could be caused by pneumonia. The four-time Italian prime minister and leader of Forza Italia, one of the parties that supports the center-right government led by Giorgia Meloni, already spent three days last week hospitalized at the aforementioned medical center. He was discharged on Thursday, after undergoing “some normal medical check-ups” due to an arrhythmia, sources around him reported at the time.
Berlusconi is accompanied at the hospital by his eldest daughter, Marina, and by other relatives. Antonio Tajani, Minister of Foreign Affairs and coordinator of Forza Italia, assured that the octogenarian politician, victim of “an unresolved infection”, is conscious and “speaks”. He would be waiting to know the result of some medical tests that he has undergone, including a CT scan.
Some local media assure that the tycoon’s situation is not “dramatic”, as he remains “stable” within the severity in the San Raffaele cardiosurgical intensive care unit. In recent years, Berlusconi has experienced various hospitalizations due to his worsening health after contracting Covid-19 in September 2020. That infection caused him pneumonia that left him very weak, aggravating some of the ailments he already had, such as a chronic inflammatory pathology and heart problems that have forced him to wear a pacemaker for years. In January 2022 he also suffered a serious urinary tract infection that forced him to spend a new period admitted to San Raffaele.
After leaving the hospital last Thursday, where he was accompanied by his girlfriend, Marta Fascina, who is 54 years younger than him, Berlusconi published this past Sunday a photo on his profile on social networks in which he was seen in the middle of a meadow full of tulips at his villa in Arcore, just outside Milan. With his usual close tone, which led him to become the protagonist of Italian politics, society and the economy, the former ‘Cavaliere’ commented that he likes “all flowers, but especially tulips because of the variety of colors”.
Berlusconi’s hospitalization causes anxiety in Italy due to the implications it could have for the conservative coalition that supports the Meloni government. Although almost three decades have passed since his first electoral victory in 1994, he has never wanted to have a successor as leader of Forza Italia, to the point that he has been striking down the successive ‘dolphins’ that emerged in the center right, such as Pierferdinando Casini, Gianfranco Fini or Angelino Alfano.