We still know too little about Omicron and therefore we need to raise our guard, reorganizing assistance in the light of a new state of emergency. With a circular addressed to the regions, the Ministry of Health activates the maximum alert plan for hospitals and the territory to deal with the impact of the new variant. Including “the reshaping of the planned activity considered deferrable” as has already happened in previous pandemic waves. Omicron represents an unknown factor: sufficient scientific evidence has not yet been collected on the three fundamental aspects: how quickly it is transmitted, whether it involves serious complications such as to require hospitalization and finally whether it totally or partially circumvents the protection of the vaccine. So, says the Minister of Health, Roberto Speranza, the government looks with “extreme concern at the spread of Omicron” and calls for the utmost caution even if at the moment there are no decisions on any new straits and it is not assumed that the vaccination will be compulsory. . Not even for students: “the right to health must be reconciled with the right to education”, observes Speranza. Italy has an advantage over Omicron, continues the minister, and must maintain it with vaccinations. There are already 52 thousand children between 5 and 11 years old vaccinated. Among them, adds the minister, “also my two children”.
Omicron is running and the possibility is looming that the whole of Italy can be found immediately after Christmas in a higher risk area. In orange according to Guido Rasi, former director of the European Medicines Agency, now consultant to the emergency commissioner, Francesco Paolo Figliuolo. “If Omicron misses the vaccine, it means that it is completely another virus and the green pass is not enough,” observes Rasi. And also for the virologist, Fabrizio Pregliasco it is possible that after Christmas “the daily cases rise to 50 thousand”. Italy must again raise the level of the response as it already happened during the first waves of the epidemic. The alert had already been launched by doctors on the front line in emergency departments who reported many days ago how the beds occupied by Covid patients were multiplying. In particular, the anesthesiologists, Arooi _Emac, ask for a lockdown for the unvaccinated. The circular sent to Regions and Municipalities and to the orders of health professionals recommends the timely activation at the regional level of all organizational measures to deal with any increase in the demand for health care by local structures, local health authorities and medical clinics, and also by hospitals so that they are able to guarantee the care of Covid patients.
In the last eight weeks, the ministry underlines “rapid increases in the incidence have been recorded, which has now reached 241 cases per 100,000 inhabitants; the occupancy rate of beds in intensive care, 9.6%; and in the medical areas, 12.1%; while both the mean Rt calculated on symptomatic cases, 1.13, remained stable and significantly above the epidemic threshold; both the transmissibility index based on cases with hospitalization, 1.09 “. Italy, the ministry warns, is “in an acute epidemic phase, characterized by a high transmission rate of the Sars Cov2 virus in most of the country”, and therefore the circular alerts the regions to possible “further epidemiological and welfare impacts potentially related to the greater spread of the viral variant Omicron, whose characteristics in terms of transmissibility, severity of the disease and sensitivity to the vaccines currently in use are not yet clearly defined “.