Government member made mea culpa about optimism in 'second wave'
Italy's Sports Minister Vincenzo Spadafora has issued a mea culpa regarding the government's optimism over the coronavirus pandemic a few weeks ago.
Between the end of September and the beginning of October, ministers and other representatives of the Italian government stated on several occasions that the country's situation in the “second wave” of Sars-CoV-2 was better than that of other European nations, but the numbers seem to have gotten out of control again.
“We should have kept quiet two weeks ago,” commented Spadafora in an interview with broadcaster Rai, when asked about what went wrong in the last few days. At the beginning of October, the Minister of Health, Roberto Speranza, had said that Italy “was better than many European countries” in the second wave of the pandemic.
For around 10 days, Italy has been recording consecutive records of new cases of the Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus, while the number of deaths every 24 hours – 128 last Sunday – returned to the level of the second half of May, when the country I had just come out of more than two months of lockdown.
Because of this, several regions, such as Lazio, Lombardy and Campania, have declared a nighttime curfew, with the latter expected to introduce a lockdown in the coming days.
Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte signed a decree that closes bars and restaurants at 18pm (with the exception of takeout and delivery services) and obliges high schools to have at least 75% of their workload with distance learning.
Gyms, swimming pools, cinemas, theaters and concert halls have been closed, and amateur sports competitions are suspended. To date, Italy has recorded 525.782 cases of the new coronavirus and 37.338 deaths. (Handle)
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