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ROME. At a much slower pace than in the rest of Europe, for the sixth week in a row, the epidemic curve continues to grow in Italy as well. But the most worrying thing is the average age of those infected, which went from 29 years of the Ferragostane follies to 35 in the last week monitored by the ISS and the health ministry, from August 31 to September 6. “With signs of greater transmission in the home and family, with circulation also in the elderly,” the report wrote.
Which leaves little room for hypotheses of easing measures, such as reducing the quarantine from 14 to 10 days. Precisely, the Ministry and the ISS not only point out that “for the moment the data confirm the opportunity to maintain the prevention and control measures already adopted”, but also add that it is necessary “to be prepared to activate new interventions in the event of a further deterioration. ” . In short, continuing at this rate, a new tightening is to be expected.
After all, the numbers speak for themselves. Since August, the RT, the contagion index, has continued to rise and is now at 1.14, having crossed the safety threshold on the 16th of last month. There are six over the guard limit: Abruzzo and Friuli, both with Rt at 1.02, Liguria (at 1.13), Puglia (1.21), Trento (1.58) and Sardinia (1.41). But as the report’s editors recall, RT “could slightly underestimate the transmission of the virus across the country.”
The truth is that from August 24 to September 6, the incidence of cases per 100,000 inhabitants went from 23.68 to 27.89 infections. Which is still the best figure in Europe, apart from Germany, but it is still worrying. Also because we cannot continue to say that it is a temporary phenomenon, due to the returns from the holidays.
In fact, imported cases are only 15% of those diagnosed. Although the greatest alarm occurs in the era of positives, far from the 60 years of March-April, but constantly increasing, so much so that those over 50 infected in the last two weeks monitored amounted to 28% of the total against 20% of the previous two. For now, the impact on hospitals is modest. But some spies have already been activated: in ordinary wards before one bed in a hundred was occupied by a Covid patient, now there are two. In intensive care, it went from 2 to 3. In total, only 175 infected were hospitalized yesterday.
But that we are not deceived about a softening of the virus makes us understand what is happening in Spain. Infections have skyrocketed for some time, reaching more than 12,000 yesterday. At first it seemed like a harmless wave, with few hospitalizations in the face of the spread of the virus, it also went from young to adults: today hospitals are again under stress, with 1,131 intubated patients. They are not our 4,000 at the beginning of April but they represent an eloquent response to those who continue to argue that the virus is less dangerous.
Covid, the report emphasizes, “circulates throughout the country”, with 2,280 active outbreaks (1,799 two weeks earlier). Guilt «often drecreational activities that involve social gatherings and violations of the rules of distancing ”, the experts point out in the report. And “this entails an increasing commitment from local services in the search for contacts, which until now have managed to contain the local transmission of the virus.”
Too bad that of the 6,000 hires of “virus hunters”, contact tracing personnel, only a few hundred have been seen. Leave a patrol of nine thousand men to contact tens of thousands of people at risk of contagion on a daily basis. Perhaps because those who had to protect themselves and others did not.
