Sigh of relief for most of Italy: the month of February, at least at the beginning, will be in the yellow zone for most Italians. In fact, from Sunday 31 January, after the usual monitoring by the ISS and the Ministry of Health, the measures to contain the contagion will ease in almost all Regions: only five will remain orange (Puglia, Sardinia, Sicily, Umbria and the autonomous province of Bolzano), all the other 16 become or remain yellow, including Lazio and Lombardy that were in the balance until the last moment. February therefore begins without any red region, i.e. practically under lockdown.
The easing was possible thanks to the now constant decrease in the national Rt index. The factor that calculates the speed of replication of the infection detected today by the control room of the Higher Institute of Health, Ministry of Health and Regions is 0,84. This is quite a leap backwards from last week's 0,97, when the first reduction in that value was recorded after five weeks of growth and staying above the critical threshold of 1. Based on the monitoring of the Control Room, all Regions except Umbria in the period between 18 and 24 January have data from the yellow zone, i.e. an Rt of less than 1 and a low or moderate risk.
However, for some Regions, in theory, it would have been necessary to wait another week for the color change, because technically the Dpcm indicated that to move from an area with more restrictions to one with less, one had to wait two weeks with data compatible with the lower classification , but counting started from the first week monitoring revealed data improvement. So effectively it took three weeks of yellow numbers, for example, to leave orange. Now, however, those 14 days are net, i.e. with two monitoring from the yellow zone the orange one is abandoned (and with two from orange the red one).
