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At the end of the week, Lombardy could become the “orange zone”. It doesn’t really change much in daily life. It will be possible to move within the limits of the municipality itself without self-certification, but it will continue to be prohibited to go to other municipalities and other regions without reasons of real need. Most of the commercial activities will remain closed; therefore, what is so desired will not be free for everyone. Here the detailed explanation of what will change, in practice, with the transition to the different color.
Governor Attilio Fontana, in recent days, spoke of cautious optimism about the end of the second wave. Very true: but we cannot forget the dramatic consequences of deaths that the virus brings with it in the medium term. Many politicians and local administrators are pushing hard for the government to allow the opening of ski resorts, a major sector in the Lombard economy, for a less rigid Christmas. According to a recent estimate by the Chamber of Commerce of Milan and Brianza, the turnover of Lombard hill stations, including hotels, shops and ski lifts, exceeded 260 million euros in 2019. Impressive figures, of course, but zero compared to cost of the pandemic in human lives; and especially in line with the crisis in many other economic sectors of equal importance, just think of the world of entertainment. Because what, in the persuasive communication of several Lombard political forces, was the overcoming of the acute pandemic phase, is not reflected in the harsh number of Sars-Cov-2 infections.
In these photographs taken by Simone Bugna, the second wave of the epidemic in the region can be clearly seen, as of September 28, 2020. The percentage of positives in the swabs made is stable: only in the last 3 days it shows a slight fogging.
Same speech about the new positives. The 7-day moving average remains practically unchanged and the daily data for the weekend that just passed is perfectly in line with the previous one. We are stabilizing, but talking about a drastic decline is crazy.
The pressure on hospitals, then, remains maximum. Intensive care remains full. There has been a steady increase mitigated by slight braking in the last 24 hours. This, therefore, suggests another 7-14 days with a high number of deaths.
Only the daily increase in hospitalizations of seriously ill patients shows some degree of reduction. But the return to normalcy means the elimination of an influx of covidual patients that had brought nearly 100 people every 48 hours to the Lombardy region in the first weeks of November.
It is widely demonstrated that lax measures lead to a rapid spread of outbreaks and an exponential growth of infections, with the consequent rise in the national transmission index Rt. March and October, in a few days. The orange zone of Lombardy, therefore, has its reason for being in the mere calculation of the general indices of the CTS (Scientific Technical Committee), but it cannot, and must not, give rise to a relaxation of the commitment of every Lombard to respect the rules spacing and use of masks. The snapshot to date, with a slight hint of a slowdown in the epidemic in the region, does not authorize any Christmas of uncontrolled parties.
