ROME, 22 April 2020:
Italy will announce plans to reopen the country starting from May 4 after a lockdown imposed to contain the coronavirus epidemic, prime minister Giuseppe Conte said yesterday.
Conte said in a statement in Italian on Facebook that easing the lockdown would involve a “complex programme” which will be announced by the end of this week.
“A reasonable prediction is that we will apply it starting May 4. We must act on the basis of a national plan, which takes into account the territorial peculiarities.”
Italy has been one of the worst affected by the outbreak, with more than 183.957 confirmed cases since the outbreak began and 24.648 deaths. Another 534 people died in the last 24 hours after contracting Covid-19, according to Italy’s Civil Protection Agency yesterday.
Authorities ordered the closure of most businesses and confined residents to their homes on March 9 to slow the spread of infection and help the country’s health service as it struggled to cope with the crisis.
The number of new cases reported in Italy on Monday – 2,256 – was the lowest since March, confirming the spread of the virus has been brought under control in the country.
Conte said the programme must offer a reorganisation of work performance, transportation and new rules for commercial activities while taking into account the characteristics of each region.
“Because the characteristics and methods of transport in Basilicata are not only the same as in Lombardy.”
He acknowledged that many residents are “tired of the efforts made so far and would like a significant reduction of these measures or even their total abolition” as well as businesses which need “commercial activities to start as soon as possible”.
“I wish I could say: let’s reopen everything. Immediately. We start tomorrow morning. But such a decision would be irresponsible. It would make the contagion curve go up in an uncontrolled way and would nullify all the efforts we have made so far.”
He said the review of the restrictions must be based on scientific evidence and added: “We cannot rely on impromptu decisions to satisfy a part of public opinion or to satisfy the requests of some production categories, individual companies or specific regions.”
Conte warned no detail could be overlooked to avoid another spike in infections, such as social distancing on public transport and avoiding busy rush hours, and that a “well-structured and articulated plan” would be needed.
Meanwhile, the Spanish government yesterday authorised children under age 14 to take walks out in public starting on April 26 – just hours after announcing they would only be able to venture out of their homes in the company of an adult on trips to buy food or medicine, or to go to the bank.
This is a measure designed to provide partial “relief” from the strict quarantine measures imposed in Spain since March 14, when the government decreed a state of alarm and imposed drastic limitations on people’s movement in an attempt to limit the spread of the highly contagious and sometimes deadly coronavirus.
Health minister Salvador Illa announced the additional change regarding children’s ability to leave their homes after health organisations, regional authorities and political parties levied harsh criticism on the national government for initially failing to include this provision in its partially-eased restrictions on the nation’s youngsters.
“We know how to listen,” the minister said.
Even the leftist Podemos party, which governs in coalition with Spain’s Socialists, had asked that the original measure be rectified.
Now in the sixth week of confinement, Spain’s students at all educational levels have been obligated to remain in their homes with classes suspended.
Addressing the Spanish Senate, Illa yesterday said the country is still not in the “de-escalation” phase of the pandemic – which would allow authorities to gradually ease other aspects of the confinement measures, specifying that moving further in this direction would depend on how the pandemic develops from here on out.
Paediatricians and parents’ associations – along with some regional governments – had asked for a relaxation of the prolonged lockdown as it applied to children to help prevent potential physical and psychological harm to Spain’s youngsters.
“The majority of children have stayed in their houses, for which reason the probability that they are infected is very low,” Maria Jesus Montero, the spokesperson for the Socialist Party-led government, told a press briefing earlier on Tuesday in making the original announcement of the measure approved earlier in the day by the Council of Ministers and which affects a total of 6.8 million children.
“We propose that their leaving the house be controlled. We are not relaxing the confinement measures. It is the responsibility of the adults to comply with the measures.”
Montero said the age bracket of one to 13 was selected for partially eased measures at this time because teenagers aged 14 and up were already able to leave the house for errands such as picking up groceries.
According to the lockdown measures currently in place, only one person from each household is allowed out for errands at any given time.
Prime minister Pedro Sanchez said over the weekend that he would submit a proposal to extend the lockdown until May 9, although such a move must be approved by lawmakers.
The Spanish Health Ministry yesterday said 430 people died in the past 24 hours after testing positive for the coronavirus, bringing the pandemic’s official death toll in the Iberian nation to 21,282.
Yesterday’s figures represented a small uptick from the fatality count on previous day, a situation that is frequently the case as the figures are often revised to retroactively correct delays in data collection over the weekend.
Meanwhile, the number of infections detected in the last 24 hours fell to 3,968, a drop of around 300 cases compared to Monday and around 1,000 fewer cases than on Tuesday last week despite the fact that the government has boosted its testing.
Fernando Simon, head of the department of public health emergencies, said: “We continue to maintain a clearly downward trend in recent days.”
Authorities have detected 204,178 positive Covid-19 cases since the outbreak began with 9,636 of those picked up by antibody tests, meaning the carrier had overcome the disease but not shown any symptoms while contagious.
Meanwhile, the national government fixed a maximum retail sales price for surgical masks at €0.96 – given that the price for these protective products had skyrocketed far beyond that level due to the heavy demand and short supply.
Spain has been the European country hardest hit in terms of confirmed Covid-19 case numbers, holding the worldwide No 2 spot behind the US. In terms of the death toll from the disease, it is in third place behind Italy and the US.
The country’s famed San Fermin running of the bulls festival is the latest cultural event to be shelved due to the coronavirus.
Municipal authorities in Pamplona, the northeastern city that welcomes around a million revellers every year for the week-long festival, said it was a sad decision but they could not see how the event could go ahead as scheduled for July 6-14.
This is the first time the festival – made famous in the English-speaking world by bullfighting enthusiast and author Ernest Hemingway in his short novel The Sun Also Rises – has been postponed due to a pandemic in the last two centuries, despite there being outbreaks of cholera and the so-called Spanish flu during that time, noted historian Miguel Izu.
The last time the festival was partially cancelled – for just one day – was in 1997 following the assassination of Popular Party politician Miguel Angel Blanco by the now-defunct Basque terrorist group ETA.
– EFE