The dangerous “calculated risk” with which Italy is preparing for a new lack of refinement

Italy is preparing to undertake a gradual reopening process which will begin tomorrow in the 14 regions at low risk of contagion classified as “yellow zones”, including Lazio and Lombardy, whose capitals are Rome and Milan respectively.

In which they record the best data, face-to-face lessons will return to high school schools and bares Yes outdoor restaurants and until the beginning of the curfew, at 10 p.m. local time, in addition to the reopening cinemas Yes theaters.

Monday too most regions remain at moderate alert level, in yellow, while four will be classified as medium risk and the island of Sardinia it will be the only one who will stay “Red zone” or a higher level of restriction.

Many bought this moment last May, when the country reopened after two months of strict quarantine following the attack of the first wave of coronavirus.

However, the current situation is very different from a year ago: the epidemiological data are anything but encouraging.

So much so that the prime minister Mario draghi said the partial reopening was a “calculated risk”.

Comparison between the two reopenings

The comparison between the May 2020 data and the current data shows the magnitude of the “calculated risk”.

In the week preceding May 18, 2020, the day of the first deconfinement, Italy has recorded an average of less than 1,000 new infections per day and a total of 66,000 positive cases. On the day of the first reopening, daily deaths again fell to less than 100 for the first time in months.

In the week leading up to that unconfined second, instead, Italy registered an average of 13,000 new cases per day, for a total of almost 500 thousand positives. In addition, last week the country recorded on average 330 deaths per day.

While the data shows a slight improvement over previous weeks, the figures are far from similar to those of May 2020, even taking into account the weaker testing capacity that there was then.

The situation is even worse if you look at the data for the northern regions. While the number of deaths in central and southern Italy is in line with the European average, in northern Italy deaths per million inhabitants are double the European average (2,800 instead of 1400), ranking above any Western country, according to a survey by the physicist. Francesco Sylos Labini, director of the Enrico Fermi research center.

To this we must add a psychological element: in May, the population was still very marked by the tragedy of the first wave, which made the populations extremely cautious. Now, as the economic crisis deepens and protests against the restrictions intensify, satiety appears to be the majority sentiment.

Some favorable differences; others, not so much

The current data is actually more similar to that of November., when Italy was hit by the second wave after a few months of relative truce during the summer.

The peak of the second fall wave occurred in the week of November 16-22, with a average of 35 thousand cases and more than 500 deaths per day.

Although now the daily number of positives and deaths is almost half the total of positives is slightly less than then, with 461 thousand active cases.

Still, there are some important differences between the two times. The first, favorable, is the vaccination campaign. To date, 20.5% of the population has received one dose of vaccine, with 17,592,423 doses injected, especially among over 70 years and health workers, and 5,187,303 people have already been vaccinated, with the full guideline.

However, for people between 50 and 69 years old —For whom mortality has significant rates, between 0.6% and 2.6% – the situation is the same as in autumn, because in this age group there is still not a significant percentage of vaccinated.

On the other hand, the incidence is almost everywhere less than 250 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, although in almost all regions is greater than 100 percent thousand, a value above which many organizations consider viral transmission to be high.

Another unfavorable data compared to May and November 2020 is that now in Italy, the British variant, which is much more contagious, prevails.

The comparison is even more ruthless if the example is taken UK, where at the time of the “cautious” reopening, there were only 2,389 cases, 23 deaths and 60 percent of the population had received at least one dose of the vaccine.

For it, several experts considered the lack of refinement premature. “In this type of situation, it is difficult for me to make calculations that are not of a political and social nature, but from an epidemiological point of view it is difficult to envisage reopening”, declared the infectologist. Massimo Galli, one of the greatest Italian experts. “What if we had a huge increase in infections in a short period of time? I hope that will not happen. “

“People are fed up and that’s why they squeeze through any opening trying to get back to a more normal life”, he admitted. “Many need to work. But many of them in their sixties and sixties have not received the vaccine. And it is the children’s grandparents who are going back to school ”.

For its part, Patrizia Laurenti, hygiene specialist and doctor at Gemelli Hospital in Rome, said the reopening risked becoming “A real boomerang in terms of health which this time will spare no one”, the result of a political decision that will require the population to be “A constant state of alert”.

It is this sense, the decision to maintain the curfew until the 22Despite pressure from the far right to eliminate him, this seems to be a signal from the government not to let its guard down completely.

With this bet Draghi plays a large part of his political capital. Another outbreak would have serious effects on the failing vaccination campaign and exacerbate the country’s problems. If there is one thing everyone in Italy is clear about, it is that the economy, which is suffering its worst recession since the end of World War II, cannot afford another shutdown.

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