“Are the shops open from 4? Well, what about schools? ”- Corriere.it

It was almost three o’clock the other night when the ministers left Palazzo Chigi after one o’clock. brilliant meeting, despite the windows being opened to limit the risk of contagion. We were talking about Christmas, a file that is shaking the government’s mind a lot. And the question that has once again divided Giallorossi’s team Giuseppe Conte is there once more school.

Was Lucia azzolina, after two in the morning, freezing my colleagues: «Of course I am also happy because the curve is flattening, but there is one thing that I do not understand. I feel a great euphoria, I hear you talking about opening shops, restaurants, ski slopes … But none of you have anything to say about the school? Do you really think that with the Dpcm of December 3 you can reopen everything, leaving high schools closed?».

An embarrassing silence followed, until Renzian’s minister Elena Bonetti went to the rescue of his colleague: “Lucia is right, schools should reopen as soon as possibleThey say that no minister of the Democratic Party, who just yesterday celebrated the General States of the school, shared the meaningful appeal of the Director of Education and in fact that more than one, perhaps in a whisper, observed how it is “impossible, with ambulance lines in front of hospitals, fight for religion to reopen institutes ”.

Between 5 stars there are those who hope it is possible end distance education as of January 7or, but for the Health holder, Roberto Speranza, “We will have to see how we are,” because January is very far away and pre impossiblesee the epidemiological situation after the Christmas holidays.

(Il Corriere has a newsletter on the coronavirus. It’s free, sign up here)

Holidays, in fact. If for the penalty wing, of which, in addition to Speranza, Francesco Boccia and Dario Franceschini, dancing and toasting New Year’s Eve would be a crazy bet and going skiing with an inexcusable lightness, other ministers push to restart.

And also Conte, which is also described as “cautious”, I would like to allow a merchants and restaurateurs to keep the lights on and lift the shutters as much as possible before Christmas to jumpstart the economy. The productive categories are in pressure on the government and resisting is difficult, proof of this is the long confrontation in the CDM over the snow, which has already whitened the peaks of the Dolomites. Belluno’s minister Federico D’Incà and the head of Sport Vincenzo Spadafora they would have been very insistent on reopening the ski lifts.

“We have to be very careful, we need prudence and rigor – Franceschini warned, after having started a cold laugh from his colleagues because “face-to-face encounters are done with the windows open” -. We cannot risk an understatement like Ferragosto driving up the curve and exploding the third wave in January.

And Speranza, convinced that Italy has entered one “New phase” of the second wave: «We must imagine ad hoc measures that allow us to manage vacation weeks without risk. Although in December almost the whole country will be in the yellow or orange band, we will have to maintain strict national measures and evaluate how to strengthen them between Christmas and New Year.

Although he noted with satisfaction the drastic and encouraging drop in the number of patients admitted to intensive care, 10 in total yesterday, The Minister of Health urges Conte to stop the “easy enthusiasms”. Which means that, in their plans, “restaurants and bars cannot reopen at night”, not even for dinner on the 31st and not even in the yellow regions.

Also from shops there has been a lot of discussion, because you have to decide how to reopen historic centers and whether to keep companies open for two weeks from December 4and then close again before Christmas. A solution that the “soft” wing of the government considers it too drastic.