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In the last seven days – between Friday and last Thursday – there have been 241,522 new cases of coronavirus in Italy, an increase of 16% compared to the previous week. With each passing week, the number of new cases remains the highest since the beginning of the epidemic, but the weekly increase is progressively decreasing: last week it was 38%, the previous one to 79%, the previous to 95%.
The fact that the contagion curve is slowing down has several causes. Partly these are the effects of restrictive measures and the change in habits that have occurred in the last month, but partly it depends on the fact that contact tracing now reaches far fewer asymptomatic and even less suspicious cases than by not being subject the hyssop does not end in the official statistics. This always happens, but especially when the new daily cases are as many as those of these weeks.
That the epidemic situation is actually still getting worse can be seen in the death graph, which follows a trend of a couple of weeks lag compared to infections. In the last seven days, 3,397 deaths have been registered, 64% more than the previous week. In recent days, twice the daily deaths have exceeded 600: it had not happened since the first half of April.
About ten days have passed since the Dpcm with which the government divided Italy into three zones with different restrictive measures, effectively deciding one emergency shutdown more flexible than spring in Lombardy, Piedmont, Valle d’Aosta and Calabria. Therefore, the effects of these measures are not yet visible – it takes at least a couple of weeks – and even less those of the subsequent restrictions decided in some regions, which have moved from the “yellow zone” to the “orange” zone. or even “red”.
But it has been more than a month since the first measures decided to counter the second wave of infections, and the data shows that there have been effects. In its latest weekly monitoring, published on Tuesday, the Istituto Superiore di Sanità calculated that the national transmission index (Rt) as of November 3, referring to cases registered between October 15 and 28, it was equal to 1.72. Between the beginning of September and mid-October, Rt , which is used to estimate the spread rate of the coronavirus, rose rapidly, passing above the critical threshold of 1 and nearly doubling. For a couple of weeks it has continued to grow, but less: a probable and important effect of the restrictive measures.
(National Institute of Health)
But even if Rt is growing less, it does not mean that the numbers of the epidemic are comforting. The ISS observes “an acceleration of the progressive worsening of the epidemic that is reflected in a workload that is no longer sustainable for health systems.” For several weeks, contact tracing has been greatly reduced in many regions, due to the inability to keep up with the epidemiological investigations that require all new cases. Now the focus is on intensive care, another fundamental gear in the management of the epidemic, which is again encountering more and more difficulties and which in certain regions has already far exceeded the critical thresholds, approaching collapse.
– Read also: What’s near an intensive care bed
This is especially true for those regions and provinces for which the current one is in fact the first wave: in spring, due to the closure, they were substantially excluded from the hospital difficulties, which instead came in autumn. This is the case in Umbria, Puglia or Campania. The regions for now below the 30 percent threshold for Covid patients in intensive care units, considered critical, are Basilicata, Calabria, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Molise and Veneto.
– Read also: In a piece of Italy, this is the first wave
The most in difficulty, according to the data processed by Sole 24 Mineral, are Valle d’Aosta (80%), PA Bolzano (76%), Lombardy (75%), Piedmont (61%), Umbria (59%), PA Trento (59%), Liguria (52%), Marche ( 52%), Tuscany (49%). It must be taken into account that normally the number of places in intensive care increases every day, and that the regions must have a certain number of places that can be “activated” in the event of an emergency.
The data on the positive rate of buffers, that is, on those that are positive over the total manufactured, stood just above 16%, with a hint of stabilization after a few weeks in which it had grown rapidly. Although it is a partial indicator, it shows that trial operations continue to focus on people who are already experiencing symptoms and are reaching asymptomatic ones less and less.
– Read also: Explanation of the positivity rate of swabs
Also this week Lombardy is the region that has registered the most cases: almost 61 thousand, which, however, is only 10% more than in the previous seven days. The largest increases were registered in Piedmont (27,474), Campania (more than 26 thousand) and Veneto (more than 22 thousand).
– Read also: How much do we move after the Dpcm?
The provinces where the most infections registered in the last two weeks compared to the population are Varese (1661 per 100,000 inhabitants), Monza and Brianza (1602), Como (1572), Milan (1486), Bolzano (1446) and Aosta (1387). The others in which there is a greater circulation of the coronavirus are Prato (1237), Turin (1229), Pisa (1228), Caserta (1167), Cuneo (1078) and Belluno (1072).
This week the results of 1,482,857 swabs, administered to 869,854 people, were reported. According to the ISS report, in the period between October 19 and November 1, the cases of positivity discovered with screening operations, that is, with swabs performed on certain categories considered to be at risk, such as health workers , were 27%. ; those discovered with contact tracing were 20%; those discovered because the patient had symptoms 35% (unknown for 18% of cases).
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