in photo: The trend of new daily cases in Lazio until Thursday, December 17
The new tables with the data of the 21 indicators chosen byHigher Institute of Health to assess the progress of the epidemic in Italy, published yesterday on the website of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, are of interest to the Lazio region. From a virtuous region, always inserted in ‘yellow zone’ and never in the ‘orange’ or ‘red’ zone, now the Lazio it is one of the two regions, together with Veneto, that is of greatest concern. The less rigid measures imposed on the citizens of Lazio have allowed the contagion curve to fall, but not as much as expected. And, just on Christmas Eve, the infection trend is getting worse again and the Rt index returns above the safety threshold So much so that Lazio was classified as a “high risk” region.
After the holidays, Lazio risks the orange zone
“RT is the first indicator to move, followed by the increase in new cases and then hospitalizations. Therefore, an increasing RT, even if minimal, is an element of serious concern, because it means that the transmission of the infection It is recovering. In high-risk regions there is a type 2 scenario, therefore a resurgence of circulation, and that is why we must be quick to adopt restrictive measures “, declared yesterday the president of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Silvio Brusaferro , during the regular press conference to explain the new monitoring data. The summary reads: “In particular, 3 regions (Lazio, Liguria and Veneto) are classified as high risk. Neither of them has been classified as high risk for 3 or more consecutive weeks. “Lazio and Veneto, we recall, are the two large regions that have always remained in the” yellow zone “and, therefore, have benefited from restrictive measures less severe than those imposed on citizens of other regions.
The government released the new rules for the Christmas holidays yesterday and they will be valid for all regions from December 21 to January 6. However, after that date, Lazio seriously risks changing its “color” and officially moving from the “yellow zone” to the “orange zone” if the Rt index does not return below the threshold. In this regard, the crowds of recent weekends on the shopping streets have certainly not helped and certainly will not help the lunches (although limited to some people) during the Christmas holidays.
What are the data that concern Lazio: Rt index above 1, but not only
As can be seen from the tables provided by the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, there are essentially three data of concern about the situation in Lazio: the Rt index, up and back above 1 (slightly, since it is in 1.04), the trend of increasing outbreaks and the parameters on the impact of the epidemic on health services, that is, the fact that the beds occupied in hospital wards are still above the critical threshold. For these reasons, Lazio’s overall risk rating is “high”, with the region entering a type 2 scenario, that is:
SCENARIO 2. Situation of sustained and generalized transmissibility but manageable by the health system in the short-medium term, with regional values of Rt that oscillate systematically and significantly between Rt = 1 and Rt = 1.25, if it is not It is possible to fully track new outbreaks, including school ones, but it is still possible to greatly limit the transmission potential of SARS-CoV-2 with ordinary and extraordinary containment / mitigation measures. An epidemic with these characteristics of transmissibility could be characterized, in addition to the evident impossibility of containing all the outbreaks, by a constant increase in the incidence of cases (at least symptomatic; in fact it is possible that a reduction in the percentage of asymptomatic cases is observed identified versus the total given the impossibility of conducting the epidemiological investigation for all new outbreaks) and the corresponding increase in the rates of hospitalization and admissions to intensive care. However, the growth in the number of cases could be relatively slow, without causing a significant overload of care services for at least 2-4 months.
