Italy, Europe's COVID-19 epicenter with more confirmed cases and deaths than any country on the continent, can now look to gradually ease its harsh social distancing and mandatory lockdown measures credited with slowing the spread of this disease.
Italians have suffered through five painful weeks of government-enforced mass isolation. Horrific stories, images and videos out of Italy showed the coronavirus at its worst and hard-hit Italians at their best as they battled doggedly to get the pandemic under control.
Starting in February northern Italy, but centered on Lombardy, the outbreak quickly spread to the entire country in less than a month. On March 8, prime minister Giuseppe Conte imposed a lockdown affecting 16 million people in Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna, Veneto, Piedmont, and Marche. On March 9, he imposed a national quarantine, restricting people's movement except for necessary services and jobs, and people going to the hospital or seeing their doctors.
On April 5, Italy reported its lowest daily rise in COVID-19 deaths for nearly two weeks. Health authorities also said the number of patients in intensive care had fallen for the first time since the pandemic began.
Despite this welcome news, officials urged Italians not to disregard strict lockdown measures that are starting to show On April 5, the Civil Protection department reported 681 deaths, bringing the total to 15,632 since the outbreak began in northern Italy on February 21. It was the lowest daily rise in deaths since March 23.
"This is an important piece of news because it allows our hospitals to breathe," said Civil Protection head Angelo Borelli.
The price for this success has been high, however. Italy reported 152,271 confirmed coronavirus cases (the highest in Europe) and 19,468 deaths (also the highest in Europe but the second-highest in the world after the United States.) as of 8:06 a.m. Sunday, Milan time.
Despite the drop in deaths, there isn't a clear decline in the number of new cases. This notwithstanding, the Conte government has begun grappling with the question of how to manage social distancing on mass transit, re-open businesses and re-launch manufacturing without re-igniting the pandemic again.
The Conte government is mulling starting Phase II, which it calls a "cautious reopening," while waiting for a COVID-19 vaccine to be developed. This vaccine is expected to start being used by 2022.
″We obviously don't want to delude ourselves that everything will change," said Conte to Italians.
Conte extended the nationwide lockdown through May 3 on Friday, after which, ″I hope we can start again with caution and gradually -- but restart."
