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Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has tightened coronavirus restrictions across the country after the country recorded a record number of new cases, despite opposition from regional chiefs and street protests over curfews.
Cinemas, theaters, gyms and swimming pools must close under the new rules, which go into effect tomorrow and run until Nov. 24, while restaurants and bars will stop operating at 6 p.m., the prime minister’s office said.
Italy, the first European country to be hit hard by the pandemic and to impose a national blockade, yesterday registered almost 20,000 new cases in a 24-hour period.
“Semi-shutdown for a month,” the Repubblica newspaper said, noting that Conte had done little to appease regional bosses who had called for much softer measures to save ailing companies devastated by the spring shutdown.
Schools and daycares will remain open, although up to 75% of classes for high schools and colleges will move online.
People are urged to avoid public transportation or move beyond their own communities when possible.
The new measures were introduced just hours after dozens of far-right protesters in Rome clashed with riot police during a demonstration against the region’s curfew, firing fireworks, burning containers and launching projectiles.
Some 200 masked militants belonging to the neo-fascist group Forza Nuova lead the skirmish in a second night of street protests after hundreds of protesters clashed with officers in Naples, further south, over their curfew.
Several regions have imposed overnight curfews in an attempt to stem the increase in the number of Covid-19 infections. Piedmont in the north and Sicily in the south will follow this week.
But regional leaders had warned that the business closure would exacerbate social tensions as the country struggles to emerge from its worst postwar recession, triggered by the two-month shudown earlier this year.
The head of the northern region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, Massimiliano Fedriga, appealed to Mr. Conte saying that “social tension is increasing and runs the risk of worsening if we do not adopt fair and rational measures.”
Conte, however, has come under intense pressure in recent days from scientists to do more to curb the contagion.
“Many regions did not improve the (health) system this summer, and now we are paying the consequences,” the adviser to the Italian government of the World Health Organization, Walter Ricciardi, told the Messaggero newspaper.
“We only have a few weeks to intervene. We need local closures, even regional ones. The curfew doesn’t work.”
Italy has registered more than 500,000 cases and 37,000 deaths, according to figures from the Health Ministry.
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