Covid, Italy will turn yellow: only one region remains in the balance

ROME – After more than 5 months, Italy is back in the yellow zone, with restaurants – at least those that have open spaces – cinemas, theaters and museums that will be able to reopen in Sardinia, Sicily and probably also in Valle d’Aosta from Monday , the three regions that were still orange and where travel will also be free. It is the effect on the spread of the virus of two concomitant factors: the restrictions and closures of the past few weeks; the progress of the vaccination campaign, with now a third of Italians having had at least one dose.

The weekly data that will be validated by the control room in the next few hours, therefore, they confirm the progressive albeit slow improvement of the epidemiological situation, with the RT at national level which remains stable (between 0.8 and 0.9) and a decrease in all regions of the incidence and hospitalizations, both in intensive care and in the ordinary wards. In one month, Gimbe said, patients in resuscitation dropped by 45.1% (from 3,743 to 2,056) and those in medical areas by 49.1%. For this reason the whole country should be yellow, with only one region still hanging in the balance, the Aosta Valley, which two weeks ago went into the red zone due to the incidence of more than 250 cases per 100 thousand inhabitants. President Erik Lavevaz wrote a letter to Health Minister Roberto Speranza asking for the yellow zone and underlining that “the Rt index has been below the threshold of 1 for over a month and the incidence of new cases is around 150 per 100 thousand inhabitants”. If these are the numbers, however, there is no need for any intervention by the minister and the Region will reach the rest of Italy in yellow from Monday. But this week’s monitoring will also be important for two other reasons. The first is that it is the bulletin in which there could be some regions with an incidence of less than 50 cases per 100 thousand inhabitants; a condition that, together with the low risk and if maintained for three consecutive weeks, will bring those regions into the white zone: it means that from 7 June there could be territories in which the only restrictions that will remain standing are the spacing and use of the mask. The second reason is that with this week’s data we will begin to see the effects of the first openings on April 26th. They will therefore be fundamental for the decisions that the government will take in the political control room convened on Monday by Prime Minister Mario Draghi, who, however, has already made it clear that the curfew will remain and that the line to be followed is that of the graduality of choices and caution. The premier’s firm position produced a first effect: the motion in the Senate with which the center-right asked, among other things, to cancel the ‘tutti a casa’, was withdrawn and replaced by a signed agenda by all the majority with which the government undertakes to “strengthen and speed up the operations for the issuance of the green pass” and “provide for any useful action to progressively overcome the so-called curfew regime.” Progressively, not immediately.

«It is a measure that will be removed – confirms Undersecretary of Health Pierpaolo Sileri – but we still don’t know when ». On Monday, therefore, the control room should postpone the return time to 11 pm from 24 May (even if the center-right hopes to be able to bring it to 24) and define the date of the restart of the wedding sector (probably around 15 June) and of the centers commercial over the weekend: the hypothesis is that they can reopen as early as the 22nd. Choices that should be translated into a decree by the Council of Ministers to be held on Wednesday with the return of the premier from Paris. For the rest, the resumption of indoor restaurants and gyms should be confirmed on 1 June, fairs on 15 and theme parks on 1 July, together with congresses and conferences.

But the main novelty could come from the modification of the parameters which define the coloration of the regions, downsizing the importance of the infection spread index (Rt) and instead giving space to hospital RT and incidence: the government aims to make it operational already for monitoring on Friday 21 May but to at the same time, ministerial sources underline, the alert system set up – including the calculation of RT – will not be canceled to guarantee the possibility of promptly intervening with local measures.