Fewer contagion outbreaks and less pressure on hospitals: these two good news have taken Sicily a bit by surprise from the orange zone to the yellow zone. And they pushed Governor Nello Musumeci, after a summit at Palazzo d’Orleans, not to go against the trend and sweep away the additional restrictions he had imposed on November 19: shops, bars and restaurants are also open on Sundays. In short, the soft line wins, supported above all by trade associations of commercial activities that asked for a little oxygen. The same satisfaction is not expressed by the majority of the members of the regional technical-scientific committee, concerned about the decrease in attention on the island but not consulted yesterday by the governor. “There is a risk of falling back into the emergency and amplifying the danger at Christmas”, is the concept that was repeated yesterday afternoon in the WhatsApp expert chat.
The smooth line
Show firmness and dissatisfaction with economic operators or loosen restrictions and risk nurturing a climate of “freedom for all”? This was the question the governor asked himself for twenty-four hours after the promotion from Rome arrived. In the end, the first option prevailed. In fact, Musumeci, who cannot ease the prohibitions envisaged for the yellow zone, but rather strengthen them, has chosen not to step on the hand. Indeed, it has eliminated the only restriction that it had established with the previous ordinance of November 19: that is, the obligation of merchants to keep the shutters closed on Sundays. The ban is maintained, as provided by the decree of the Prime Minister, only for shopping centers. For the rest in Sicily the same rules apply in all yellow areas, starting with the possibility of moving between one municipality and another, without self-certification.
Sicily, green light for Sunday shopping: Black Friday can continue
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The indicators
The 21 now known indicators, on which the assessment of the regions is based, promoted Sicily in the yellow zone. The figures, reported in the monitoring of the control room of the Ministry of Health and the Higher Institute of Health carried out from November 16 to 22, give an island a slight improvement. Just as yesterday’s bulletin gives hope, which registers 1,189 new positives of the 8,777 swabs made, 23 fewer people in the hospital, but 43 deaths. In short, the data is encouraging, especially when compared to the rest of Italy. On the island the outbreaks have gone from 467 to 372 and the pressure on intensive care has decreased slightly, while in ordinary hospital wards it increases. The number of places occupied in intensive care by Covid patients has gone from 30 to 29 percent. While in the other departments the percentage increased from 36 to 38. The number of positives whose origin of contagion is unknown decreases, even slightly: an important indicator to understand how tracking is skipped.
Covid, infections decrease but the peak is not there: only Puglia runs faster than Sicily
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Fear
If today is reassuring, the future is a little less so. At least that is the opinion of a large part of the experts of the Technical-Scientific Committee, concerned about a lowering of guard, caused by the promotion in the yellow zone that runs the risk of amplifying the expected increase in infections during the Christmas holidays. “If the prescriptions are maintained – observes Massimo Farinella, director of infectious diseases of the Cervelló hospital in Palermo and member of the regional technical-scientific committee – the changes between the orange and yellow areas are really slight. The problem is whether this promotion is interpreted as A danger ceased: because the virus has not disappeared, far from it. It takes very little time to return to an outbreak of cases, with the consequent pressure on hospitals that runs the risk of putting the system in crisis “.
Sicily rises, turns yellow. But the experts stop: “It’s a gamble”
by Giorgio Ruta
Critical voices are pursued in the chat of the Committee’s experts. If after the summer “free to all”, when there were very few cases, the second wave arrived, now, with a high number of infections, a drop in attention would be a big mistake. Hardly earned loot would be burned. For now, if we take the hospitalizations in the two Covid emergencies in Palermo as a thermometer, the temperature is low. Last night there were 12 positives at the Civico and 21 at the Cervello, while a few weeks ago the two fronts had almost a hundred patients. “To reverse course, however, little is needed,” say the experts crossing their fingers.
