The second wave of concerns about Covid-19 in Europe: daily toll of nearly 1,000 deaths in Italy

Italy today reported a new record of daily coronavirus deaths, with nearly 1,000 in the past 24 hours, a figure that has confused the public and led the government to tighten restrictions on end of year holidays.

A total of 993 people died from Covid-19 on the last day, while 23,225 were infected, bringing the death toll to 58,038 and 1,664,289 cases since the start of the pandemic, reported today the country’s health authorities.

In the past five days, the first country in Europe to hit the virus has recorded a high number of deaths that have had a full impact on society.

“The reasons for the high death toll remain a mystery. Old age is not enough to explain it,” demographer Lorenzo Richiardi, regular professor of epidemiology and medical statistics at the University of Turin, said during the analysis of figures from the newspaper La Stampa. .

“These are numbers that make us tremble,” Domenico Arcuri, extraordinary commissioner for the coronavirus, admitted to the press.

The National Research Council has warned, for its part, that the peak in daily deaths will continue to rise in the next five to ten days.

With 14 million people over 65 out of a population of 60 million, Italy is considered the country with the oldest population in Europe.

According to the National Institute of Statistics, 7 million were over 75 years old and more than 14,000 were over 100 years old in 2019.

A significant fact that must be taken into account, since “the average age of the dead is 80 years and they presented other pathologies”, according to the virologist Matteo Bassetti, quoted by the AFP press agency.

Although the number of infections has declined slightly in recent days, the increase in deaths and the pandemic in general has caused “pessimism”, “fear” and “pain” among Italians, according to a study presented today by the Censis research center.

73.4% of those questioned feel “fear of the future” and “nostalgia”, according to Censis, which portrays an Italy willing to give up many health freedoms and which supports the drastic measures (79.8%) adopted by the government for Christmas and New Years.

This morning, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte signed a decree adopted yesterday by his government with the most restrictive measures in the history of Italy for the Christmas holidays.

The text prohibits travel between regions from December 21 to January 6, but also between municipalities during public holidays.

In addition, the curfew is maintained at 10 p.m. throughout the country and the traditional rooster mass will not be possible, nor will there be parties or dinners with many guests.

To avoid more deaths in a third wave in January or February, the government intends to maintain the restrictions until the free mass vaccination campaign, although it hopes to gradually ease them from January if the epidemiological evolution is favorable.