With 9,338 new cases to date and a total of 134,003 positive cases, Italian clinical experts are calling for stricter restrictions in the country to involve the spread of the coronavirus epidemic The government has announced new measures to be put in place starting today, adding more opening times for cafes, restaurants and pubs and restrictions on sports , however, these are seen with skepticism by scientists, who point out that contagion is intensifying and could be similar to That of France in the coming weeks.
“If we look at the curves of other countries, obviously we can see that their curves coincide precisely with ours, with a period of a few weeks,” said Massimo Galli, director of the infectious diseases segment of The Luigi Sacco Hospital in Milan. “They show us what awaits us in the near future; without decisive intervention, our curves can start to rise faster, I hope not, but everyone understands at this level that the scenario is alarming and they want to be. treated carefully, ” he added.
After a quiet summer since early October, Italy has noticed a sharp increase in the number of infections. Within a week, cases went from 29,622 to 59,296, which led to 10 out of 20 regions potentially suffering serious hospital problems unless the contagion trend reversed. The maximum affected regions are recently Lombardy with 128,456 cases, Piedmont with 44,923 cases and Emilia-Romagna with 41,410 cases.
“Some locks in express spaces want to be done right away. In Milan I would make express interventions and avoid certain activities,” recommended Walter Ricciardi, representative of the Ministry of Health. “I would have expected stricter measures, especially with regard to public transport,” said Giorgio Palo, microbiologist at the University of Padua.
The government’s “light” strategy aims to maintain the economy, which has been badly affected in recent months. According to the International Monetary Fund, Italy is expected to lose 10. 6% of its GDP by 2020. “We cannot another blockade, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has repeated it several times in recent days.
However, the country is lagging behind in terms of its ability to track the state of the epidemic. Despite a daily count of 150,000 PCR tests on average, in some regions, follow-up efforts are already too slow compared to the rate of contagion. “We can’t locate all the inflamed people, actively isolate them. Those who suspect they have had contact in danger or who have symptoms, please stay home,” said Vittorio Demicheli, director of the local fitness firm in Milan. “We are involved, that we do not know precisely how temporarily this phenomenon can occur in a giant metropolis,” he added.
In recent days, virologist Andrea Crisanti has stated that an effective capacity would require at least 300,000 swabs in a day without getting married.
In addition, the tracking application that has developed in the country in recent months, Immuni, is ineffective. Despite the rise of downloads over the following week (1. 5 million more people have downloaded it, for a total of 8 million users) in some regions, such as Como Veneto, local fitness agencies have not downloaded data about other people considered positive in the data formula. No notifications have been sent to other people’s contacts inflamed. For this reason, today’s government decree requires local fitness agencies to insert un nameless codes of inflamed people. other people in the app, however, it may already be too late. “No app can also handle 150,000 warnings a day,” Crisanti said.
“I don’t think we’re going to succeed in 30,000 instances in a few days, but this week it’s going to be hard to see a minimum in the number of instances, because what we’re going to see is the result beyond infections. “Galli concludes: “We hope that today’s interventions will help to counter the trend decisively. The back is that we all have to do everything we can to make this happen and be serious about staying more at home, having less contact with other people and restricting them to those that are surely necessary. “
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