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Italy's public prosecutors have questioned Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, along with Health Minister Roberto Speranza and Interior Minister Luciana Lamorghese, over the government's response to the coronavirus pandemic.

As Al Jazeera reported, Friday’s interrogation comes weeks after the investigation was launched on April 8 by the prosecutors from Bergamo, the city in the northern Lombardy region worst hit by the virus that killed more than 34,000 people in the country.

They sought answers to two main questions: why the towns of Alzano Lombardo and Nembro, both in the province of Bergamo, were not turned into so-called red zones despite the detection of coronavirus cases on February 23; and why Alzano Lombardo's hospital was closed, sanitised and reopened in just a few hours after the first infection was detected.

In contrast to Bergamo, the government imposed the country's first red zone on February 21 around the town of Codogno in Lombardy's province of Lodi 24 hours after doctors discovered a patient positive for COVID-19, a disease caused by the new coronavirus.

Earlier this week Giuseppe Conte said he would divulge all relevant facts to the prosecutor, and that "all inquiries are welcome".