Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and the country's health and interior ministers are to be questioned by prosecutors looking into how the government handled the coronavirus pandemic, news agencies reported.

Prosecutors from Bergamo, the city in the northern Lombardy region worst hit by the virus, have launched a wide-ranging investigation into the health crisis, which has officially killed over 34,000 people in Italy.

They are looking in particular at why a red zone was not enforced in February around the towns of Nembro and Alzano, with regional officials and the government blaming each other.