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The RT increased slightly but stopped at 0.8, within the lower risk threshold. Ars: “With vaccines and if we continue like this, in a few months we could leave the pandemic behind.” Battiston: “Right now you are the best region in Italy”
FLORENCE. If not the best, one of the three most virtuous. The one in Italy with the lowest incidence of contagion compared to the population, with the parameters that had dragged it into the dark weeks of the red and orange zone, now all below the risk threshold. Even outbreaks in RSA are no longer clusters of out-of-control cases, but limited alarms, in which carpet testing often succeeds in stopping the infection curve. And then he, the RT, has been going up for a few days, around 0.8, but still below 1. Translated: epidemic on braking.
It is precisely the virus transmissibility index, which has now become a regulating principle of our lives marked by restrictions dictated by colors, to reassure the experts of the regional working group and convince them that at the next meeting, scheduled to On Thursday 7 or Friday 8 January, the The control room of the Ministry of Health can only confirm the yellow zone for Tuscany.
A first confirmation was also received by the last follow-up prepared by the Higher Institute of Health, but as always photographs the trend of the curve with more than a week of delay, since it is about the evaluations on the data recorded from 21 to 27 from December. Next week will cover the seven days between December 28 and today, January 3. And the experts are convinced of this: it certainly won’t be the last four days of a new surge in infections, once again hitting an average of 500 cases per day, even having dropped below 200, to push the region orange. “If it existed, we would even be in the green zone,” lets one of the members of the crisis unit escape. Precisely because the regions with an Rt below 1 are placed in the lowest risk scenario, green. Of course, there is a big difference from the numbers Tuscany had to grapple with in November, when intensive care unit employment hit 48 percent, 18 points above the risk bar. Or when the total number of inmates crossed the peak in April, well above 2,100. Today there are 964 admissions, of which 139 in intensive care. Beds in medical areas occupied for 16% (well below the critical threshold of 40%), resuscitation for 25%.
“We are cautious but optimistic. And we can say that if we continue like this, in a few months we will be able to leave the pandemic behind, “he says. Fabio Voller, an epidemiologist and coordinator of the regional health agency, who just four days ago published a report entitled “The light at the end of the pandemic tunnel: what to do to get out of it faster.” A document in which the Ars admits that “there is no doubt that the situation in Tuscany, compared to the national context, is absolutely better, due to the combined effect of the limitation measures that followed with the different Dpcm and the corrective measures that the Region has launched, with the strengthening of the first monitoring ».
Not only. After being a black jersey from Italy until November 10 in terms of the incidence of infections in the population (more than 60 positives per 100,000 inhabitants), for weeks Tuscany has registered a constant decline until reaching an average of 10 positive per 100 thousand inhabitants. And even the percentage of positives, after the decline, now remains stable at 11% (the alarm is above 15%), just when the contagion seems to decrease among those over 65 years of age and “the decrease in weekly mean deaths “. . For Voller, vaccination will be decisive: “It will involve almost all RSA hosts and progressively the population over 80 years of age and precisely from this we expect an immediate impact on the decrease in the number of seriously ill patients and in the mortality rate” , says the head of Ars researchers, add that the arrival of AstraZeneca vaccines will be “decisive”, because they will be the easiest to administer, also because they do not require storage at polar temperatures.
But should increasing cases be concerned? “The workshops may have worked less at Christmas. Of course, there will be no third wave. If there is a new growth, it would be a continuation of the second, but we will see it around January 15, not before. In short, the belief is that Tuscany can stay yellow for at least another two weeks. Even Roberto Battiston, Professor of Physics at the University of Trento who has become a kind of national compass on the progress of the epidemic thanks to his forecasts in the peak and his calculations in RT in real time, speaks of Tuscany “as the best region of Italy – says prof al Tyrrhenian – Right now it has a Rt of 0.85, on January 7 I estimate it will be 0.8. It is true, it has risen compared to December 10, when it touched 0.3-0.4, but it still remains below 1, so the curve continues to decelerate. Also, compared to the beginning of October, when it was above 1 and started to grow again, this time the number of active infections is decreasing. The base of the epidemic is disappearing. If everyone were like Tuscany, most of Italy could reopen. ‘ –
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