Record in Italy: so many new infections have never been found

After announcing the new data, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said that a sharp rise in the epidemic curve was expected and that the government was following the situation with “concern”. “We need to stop growth, so we have introduced new restrictive measures, everyone must behave responsibly, we can only win together against the epidemic,” Conte said. He added that Italians should respect precautions rather than fear.

Prime Minister Andrea Crisanti has responded to earlier words from a virologist at the University of Padua that Italy will have to close again at Christmas due to overcrowding of intensive care units. The number of patients increased by 7,332 in one day compared to 5,901 on Tuesday. One week, on October 7, 3,678 infected people were examined in one day.

In Italy, such a high figure was now measured for the first time in the last eight months of the epidemic: the highest number of cases was recorded on March 21, with 6,557 new infections. At the time, 26,000 tests were being performed per day, compared to more than 152,000 today. In March, new patients were screened almost exclusively in the northern part of the country and the epidemic is currently spreading across the country.

Most of the new infections were re-examined in the Lombardy province, known as the focal point of spring, in 1844 cases. Of these, more than a thousand in the city of Milan and its surroundings, where the number of newly diagnosed infections doubled in twenty-four hours. In a city of one million, 6.3 percent of those tested tested positive. The heads of the intensive departments in Milan spoke of a “pre-explosion” situation.

The president of the Lombardy region has announced that further restrictions may be imposed in the coming days. In second place is the province of Campania with 818 new patients per day. In the last week, the number of infections screened has increased by more than one hundred percent across the country, the number of hospitalized patients has increased by thirty-nine percent, and the number of intensive care units has increased by one sixty-one percent. On Wednesday, forty-three patients died after the previous forty-one, bringing the death toll to 36,289.

More and more people are downloading the contact search mobile app, which has already joined 8.6 million people. The work of the Roman parliament is also hampered by the growing number of sick or quarantined deputies. Federico D’Inca, the minister without portfolio responsible for government-parliament relations, proposed the introduction of remote voting. The Minister of Education, Lucía Azzolina, has stated that the schools that reopened in mid-September will not be closed.