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In the last week in Italy, 122,318 new cases of positivity for coronavirus were registered, 21% less than the previous seven days, and half of those that had been verified in the two worst weeks of the second wave of the pandemic, the centrals of November. New cases are declining for the third week in a row.
Finally, new deaths also fell, however they remained at very high levels: between Friday and last Thursday they were 4,588, 12% less than the previous seven days. The death curve conspicuously follows a trend that is two to three weeks behind that of cases, as confirmed by the peak of infections in the second wave (November 13) and deaths (December 3). But while COVID-19 deaths are declining, 887 deaths were reported on Thursday alone, the fourth-highest daily increase since the outbreak began. However, it does not mean that they all occurred that day (the data always includes reports that go back to previous days).
There are currently no regions in which the most severe restrictions are in force to contain the epidemic, those corresponding to the “red zone”: or rather, Abruzzo should have been the last, but it has unilaterally decided to return to orange, causing some tension with government. Last Sunday, Campania, Valle d’Aosta, Tuscany and the autonomous province of Bolzano turned orange again. On the other hand, Lombardy, Piedmont, Tuscany and Campania are expected to return to yellow this weekend, a color that Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte hoped would bring all of Italy together at Christmas. The latest newsletter of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità says that R.t calculated on symptomatic cases between November 11 and 24 was 0.91, compared to 1.08 registered a week earlier.
According to updated data from the National Agency for Regional Health Services, Lombardy remains the region with the highest saturation rate of intensive care units, around 55% (last week it was 60%). However, this depends a lot on the fact that the total number of places is decreasing, since the provisional departments activated to attend the emergency are dismantled (but they remain there, in case they are needed). The saturation rate is decreasing almost everywhere: the regions where it is increasing are Friuli Venezia Giulia, Veneto, the province of Trento and Umbria where the totals have remained the same or have increased by some units.
The regions that registered the most deaths in relation to the population in the last seven days were Friuli Venezia Giulia (18.4 per 100,000 inhabitants), Valle d’Aosta (15.9), the province of Trento (12.9) and Veneto (11.6). Among these, the province of Trento is the one with the most worrying saturation rate in intensive care.
In all regions there is a clear decrease in new cases that almost always takes several weeks. The decline is especially evident in Lombardy, where it has gone from more than 50,000 cases a month ago to about 16,000 in the last week. Or in Piedmont, which went from almost 30,000 to less than 9,000. However, there are exceptions: in Veneto they increased, albeit slightly, and in the last seven days they were even more than those registered in the central week of November. Even in Friuli Venezia Giulia, the figures have been quite stable in the last month, without a real decrease, and the same has happened in Puglia (although in both regions there has been a small decrease in the last week).
The Veneto anomaly is particularly visible on the map that aggregates the data on new cases by population – the size of the circles – and the variation compared to last week – orange where it increased, green where it decreased. The Aosta Valley, one of the regions most affected at the beginning of the second wave, is now among those with the fewest cases compared to the inhabitants and the most drastic falls.
At the national level, the positive rate of tampons, that is, those that are positive over the total of those manufactured, has stabilized somewhat in the last week, after a drastic fall in the previous ones. This is explained by the fact that we do fewer swabs than in November and therefore the test operations are more focused on people with symptoms.
However, the national average only tells part of the story. In fact, Veneto still has a much higher positivity rate than the rest of Italy, equal to 23% in the last week. In many regions it is between 5 and 10 percent. Also in Puglia it was particularly high, equal to 17%.
In the graph that gathers the new cases related to the inhabitants, the increase or decrease compared to last week and the positive rate of swabs, Veneto is in the worst position: top right. In contrast, Basilicata, Calabria and Valle d’Aosta are in the lower left, that is, in the best place.
The map that shows the circulation of the virus in relation to the inhabitants at the regional level clearly shows that at this time the most affected area is the Northeast, as was already revealed last week. The province that recorded the most infections in the last two weeks was Belluno (1,291 per 100,000 inhabitants, 9% more than a week ago). Even the provinces of Treviso and Pordenone, although with a significantly lower incidence, registered an increase compared to a week ago. On the other hand, the figures have improved, for example in the province of Cuneo, which went from 967 cases per 100,000 inhabitants to 590, in the province of L’Aquila, which went from 805 to 580, and in Naples, which it went from 702 to 448. The province of Foggia, on the other hand, registers the highest incidence in the South, 690 cases in the last two weeks per 100 thousand inhabitants, down.
During the last seven days, 1,115,103 swabs were processed, 19% less than the previous week. This is a significant decline, returning to the levels of the second half of October. According to the ISS report, in the period between November 16 and 29, the cases of positivity discovered with screening operations, that is, with swabs performed on certain categories considered at risk, such as healthcare workers, were 27.9%; those discovered with contact tracing were 22.5%; those discovered because the patient had symptoms, 32.8% (unknown in 16.9% of cases).
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