With more than 80,000 deaths from coronavirus, a fierce political crisis erupts

In a doubly dramatic day in Italy, former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi opened up the government crisis by announcing that deaths from the pandemic have reached 80,326, in addition to 15,744 infected and 507 deaths in the past 24 hours.

Renzi announced the resignation from the government of ministers Teresa Bellanova and Elena Bonetti and of an undersecretary, all three from his Italia Viva party.

73% of Italians responded to poll condemning Renzi for his decision to produce an institutional divide as the coronavirus pandemic worsens and a third wave of the spread of Covid-19 is to be feared, more disastrous than the other two of the epidemic which began on February 21.

Three in four Italians considered in the poll that Renzi was acting to impose his “personal interests”.

Giuseppe Conte’s challenge

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte can respond with a speech in Parliament, then submit your resignation and that of your government in front of President Sergio Mattarella. You can also visit President Mattarella at the Quirinale Palace and present your resignation to him directly.

Once the crisis begins, the president will likely entrust Conte himself with the attempt to form a new government, the third in his term.

Italy is a parliamentary country in which governments are born and die in legislative chambers.

If Conte fails in his attempt, the president can call another candidate or dissolve the chambers and call an early general election.

The advance of the right

All polls indicate that early elections would be won by the center-right opposition. At his press conference Wednesday in a chamber of Parliament, he declared that “we will never unite with the anti-European and sovereign right”.

Renzi was ready to join a new government of the center-left parliamentary majority. Political observers believe that Conte, who has emerged weakened from this crisis, will replace to obtain the vote of confidence, in particular in the Senate, the 20 deputies and 17 senators of Italia Viva, the party of Renzi, to whom the polls attribute a popularity around 3%.

Conte has no choice but to seek consensus, especially in the Senate, where the withdrawal of legislators Renzi leaves the government in the minority, in the so-called parliamentary “swamp” of deputies and senators registered in the mixed group in because of their political dissidents or they belong to small organizations. They would be the group of “officials” who would help give life to a new executive.

Conte’s confrontation with Renzi, who served as prime minister representing the Democratic Party for three years, makes the prospect of his group’s participation in a third government under the current prime minister uncertain.

This Wednesday the center of Rome, with few people due to the pandemic and the cold, was shaken by the decision of Prime Minister Conte to return on foot from a meeting, the content of which has not been revealed, with the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella. A crowd of journalists huddled with cellphones as Conte approached Palazzo Chigi, the seat of government, demanding comment.

New restrictions due to the pandemic

Conte admitted that the health situation is dramatic “because the number of infected people is increasing in other European countries and also among us, apparently with the presence of mutated variants of the corona virus”. From what he said to the president, not a word.

The Minister of Health, Roberto Speranza, had presented an alarming panorama a few hours earlier. He said “the data on the pandemic is getting worse” and presented a new restriction plan this Parliament approved by a long majority.

“Twelve regions carry a high level of risk and have been assigned the high risk orange zone,” he said.

The other eight are in the yellow medium risk zone. None have been declared in the “red” zone, where the most rigid measures are applied, but without permanent quarantine as claimed by many scientists, who maintain the need not to waste more time in the face of the dangers due to the increase in infected and dead.

Speranza said the general worsening of the epidemiological picture shows that there are twelve regions where the number of patients admitted to intensive care has increased by more than 30% of occupied beds. In addition, most regions exceed the alert level of 40% among other hospitalized patients with Covid-19.

The minister specified that Lombardy, the main region of the country, with its capital in Milan, as well as Calabria, Emilia Romagna, Sicily and Veneto, risked being in the “red zone” because of the increase of the 21 indices that show the alternatives of the pandemic.

Hope asked to extend the state of emergency until April.

The Minister of Health praised the vaccination campaign. He said that “it is a satisfaction to announce that we are the first of the countries of the European Union to provide vaccines against Covid 19.

“With the vaccinations, we will defeat the virus, which has been going on for months,” he said. While Speranza spoke in Parliament, more than 810 thousand vaccinated people were passed across the country.

The minister said Italy has already reserved 226 million doses which will rise to 250 million in the coming weeks. “We have succeeded across the European Union in doubling the doses needed to vaccinate all Italians.”

Cinemas and theaters close

Restrictive measures include early closure of bars and restaurants, the definitive closure of cinemas, theaters and performance halls, as well as the reduction of hours in certain businesses. In the case of the red zone, the closure of businesses is total, with the exception of those deemed essential, such as food, pharmacies and newsstands.

In orange zones, restricted movement of people is allowed, but the curfew valid from November between 10 pm and 6 am.

Bars and restaurants must close at 18 and are only allowed to sell at home.

At home, a maximum of two people who do not live together can be received, as happened during the Christmas holidays, although many did not respect the boundaries and A wave of infected people is expected to arrive in the coming days by the end of the year it will just precede the third wave which many believe will arrive fueled by highly contagious mutant viruses.

The fear of mutated viruses is the threat that causes the greatest alarm in Italy after the havoc already suffered by Britain, Ireland, Germany and other European countries.

The first major “variant” of Covid 19 carries the acronym CD614G noticed in late February in northern Italy and has spread rapidly. This mutated virus is 13 times faster in its replication than the virus originating in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the epidemic began at the end of 2019.

The most feared, as two dozen infected people arrived in Italy from Britain, is the “English variant”, which contains 23 mutations. Known as B 1.1.7, the 501 mutation produces the darkest predictions due to its ability to reproduce very quickly in infections.

The “South African variant”, N501Y, which harbors higher amounts of virus from other strains, is also of concern. The Pfizer laboratory is conducting tests to verify the effectiveness of the most widely used vaccine that predominates in the United States and Europe, against the South African variant.

Ugur Sahin, the founder of the German laboratory BioNtech, which developed the Pfizer vaccine, said it takes “a few weeks” to understand the characteristics of N501Y and whether it affects the ability to neutralize the virus in Pfizer-BioNtech vaccines .

Rome, correspondent

CB