The key points
- Departments drop to 16%, 14 Regions over 15%
- First summer without restrictions
- Vaia: continue to protect the weakest
- Possible blaze in October
- Candidate to dominate, no greater gravity
- Waiting for updated vaccines
Third August with Covid, for the first time without restrictions. The pandemic is in a phase of truce after the last wave but in sight there is Centaurus, the latest Omicron variant that has also appeared in Italy. Even if it is not considered by experts to have, in the current state of knowledge, characteristics that are particularly more harmful than the others, the attention is high for what could happen at the resumption. For now, only one case has been registered by the health authorities.
Departments drop to 16%, 14 Regions over 15%
Within 24 hours, in Italy, the percentage of intensive care units occupied by Covid patients is stable at 4% and all regions are below 10%. While the percentage of seats in ordinary wards occupied by Covid-19 falls by one point, but in 14 Regions it exceeds the alert threshold of 15%: Umbria (39%), Valle d’Aosta (30% ), Calabria (31%), Basilicata (21%), Liguria (29%), Sicily (25%), Friuli Venezia Giulia (23%), Marche (22%), Abruzzo (21%), Emilia Romagna ( 19%), Puglia (18%), Lazio (17%), Campania and Pa Trento (16%). This is the survey of the National Agency for Regional Health Services (Agenas) on the data of 31 July. The percentage of places in hospital wards in the medical (or non-critical) area occupied by Covid patients grows in 5 Regions: Abruzzo (21%), Liguria (29%), Marche (22%), Molise (13%), Pa Trento (16%). Cala in 6: Basilicata (21%), Calabria (31%), Tuscany (13%), Umbria (39%), Valle d’Aosta (30%) and Veneto (12%).
First summer without restrictions
The data therefore testify to an overall easing of cases, hospitalizations and intensive. But the question Centaurus, or the sub-variant of Omicron Ba.2.75 recorded also in Italy in the sampling of 11-17 July, is in sight. A variant, for now not considered lethal, which arrives in the first summer without restrictive rules since the beginning of the pandemic: via the obligations of masks, via distancing and via the green pass that last year, together with the usual protections, accompanied the holidays of the Italians. Now only the masks remain on planes, trains, buses and in hospitals and for the rest, caution and common sense to be used especially in the case of crowded places or in the presence of fragile people.
Vaia: continue to protect the weakest
“We go on vacation in the first summer in the Covid era without restrictions, we recharge the batteries”, reports the director general of Spallanzani in Rome Francesco Vaia who recommends “continuing to protect the weakest, who are today the profile of the hospitalized and serious positive patient , that is, over seventy years old, with serious previous and concomitant pathologies that he often discovers when he goes to hospital that he is positive ». For Vaia, therefore, in the first truly free summer since the pandemic began, «let’s allow everything but in moderation, avoiding overcrowding: as always, the issue is not not doing things, but doing everything in safe conditions. Have a good rest for the Italians, they deserve it from the heart! ».
Possible blaze in October
Who believes that a resurgence of infections in October is prospectively possible, thanks to the new variant, is the infectious disease specialist and director of the San Martino clinic in Genoa, Matteo Bassetti. “In Italy, Centaurus was expected to arrive and in fact we have the first case,” he explains. «From the data in our possession at the moment it does not seem to cause serious illness, moreover vaccines, even those that are not updated, are able to provide coverage for the most important forms of infection. If it takes over, we could see a flare-up of contagions for September-October but we must not be alarmed. Everything will be less serious if we do not waste time and proceed with the vaccination campaign ».