Concern about the second wave of Covid-19 infections is growing. The alarm was raised by the Istituto Superiore della Sanità which calls for strong interventions quickly and was launched by one hundred professors and scientists who decided to write to the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, and to the Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte, invoking "drastic measures" in order to curb the infections.
In the letter, the signatories express "full acceptance of the request" of the president of the Lincei, Giorgio Parisi "to assume stringent and drastic measures in the next two or three days” to “avoid that the numbers of contagion in Italy inevitably arrive, in the absence of effective corrective measures, in the next three weeks, to produce a few hundred deaths a day”.
THE TEXT OF THE LETTER
Among the signatories of the appeal are the names of the Rector of the Normale di Pisa, Luigi Ambrosio and Fernando Ferroni, former president of the National Nuclear Physics Institute, Gianfranco Viesti, economist at the University of Bari, Carlo Doglioni, geologist and president of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology , Alfio Quarteroni, applied mathematician, Enzo Marinari, full professor of Physics at Sapienza University, Roberta Calvano, full professor of Constitutional Law at Unitelma Sapienza University, Piero Marcati, pro-rector of the Gran Sasso Institute, Alessandra Celletti astronomer, vice president of Anvur.
The necessary reconciliation of the needs of the economy and the protection of jobs with those of containing the spread of the infection must now leave room for the pressing need to safeguard the right to individual and collective health enshrined in art. 32 of the Constitutional Charter as inviolable",
“…Taking effective measures now serves precisely to save the economy and jobs. The longer you wait, the more the measures you take will have to be tougher, last longer, thus producing a greater economic impact".
This is why the contagion must be stopped now, with adequate measures, and this is why we ask to intervene now in an adequate way, in compliance with the constitutional guarantees, but in full safeguarding the health of citizens, which goes hand in hand and is also necessary and functional to economic well-being”.
These are some passages of the letter sent to the highest state institutions.
THE ANALYSIS OF THE ACCADEMIA DEI LINCEI
From his Huffington Post blog, the president of the Accademia dei Lincei, Giorgio Parisi, instead examines the current situation:
Since the first days of October, the confirmed cases of Covid have been doubling every week and for every eighty cases of Covid there is a death after about ten days or a little less. A week is just the amount of time it takes on average for an infected person to infect someone else. So a doubling every week means that each infected person infects two. In February and early March, cases quadrupled every week. We are heading towards disaster more slowly than March, but the direction is the same.
According to Parisi, if the pace of increase does not decrease, in three weeks Italy will count 100 thousand new infections and five hundred deaths a day. First, however, the health system and contact tracing, already in great difficulty, will collapse.
I am convinced that we will not get to this point and that we will be able to stop the growth sooner, but to stop the growth and get to a situation where the cases are no longer increasing, drastic measures are needed NOW. We have to halve contacts to ensure that every sick person infects one on average. During the harsh lockdown in March-April, three sick people infected an average of two. Now three people infect an average of six and instead if we want to reach a stationary situation they only have to infect three. It's not easy: the tracking system, as long as it works, allows you to isolate the sick and this reduces the number of infections; but the more the number of sick people will rise, the less useful the tracing will be, until the only possibility to stop the growth will be the hard lockdown. The next two weeks will therefore be crucial.
Anesthesiologists also follow the same line: "We fear a doubling of admissions to intensive care within 15 days, if the contagion curve maintains its current trend and while waiting to see the effects of the measures of the last dpcm: that will be the point of rupture and the moment in which we will enter a crisis because the available organic endowment of anesthesiologists-resuscitators will not be sufficient to deal with the emergency". This is what was told to ANSA by Alessandro Vergallo, president of the Italian hospital resuscitator anesthesiologists association.
COUNT: "NO TO NEW LOCKDOWN", BUT THE REGIONS ARE PRESSING
"We must rule out a generalized lockdown", reiterates the Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, speaking at the Labor Festival. “We remain vigilant and ready to intervene where necessary. We must contain the contagion by aiming to avoid the shutdown of production activity as well as of schools and public offices”, added the Premier while the Government is studying new measures that could arrive in the next few days. Among the hypotheses in the field is that of imposing a national curfew at 21 or 22 pm, closing gyms, swimming pools, bars, restaurants. Shutters down in shops on weekends. The line would be to ensure that citizens leave the house only to work or go to school, also trying to remodulate the timetables to lighten the load on public transport.
But if the Government takes time, many Regions decide to take the situation in hand, imposing more restrictive measures. After the curfew imposed in Lombardy, Campania and Lazio, Calabria also decided to intervene by prohibiting night travel and from midnight to 5 and establishing distance learning for high schools, middle schools and universities.
"We need a total lockdown," said the governor of Campania, Vincenzo De Luca. “The current data on the contagion make any type of partial measure ineffective. It is necessary to close everything, except for the categories that produce and move essential goods (industry, agriculture, construction, agri-food, transport). According to De Luca it is “essential to block mobility between regions and between municipalities. It is frankly difficult to see how effective limited measures can be in this context. In any case - he concludes - Campania will move in this direction very soon". “We have 2.280 positives out of 15.800 swabs. We have 14,5% of infections compared to 12,8% yesterday ”, concluded De Luca.
IN LOMBARDY OVER 5.000 CASES
Lombardy is again concerned where the infections continue to rise: "Unfortunately the line of contagion is growing and there are five thousand more positives than yesterday and 350 hospitalized in intensive care and not", said the president of Lombardy, Attilio Fontana, adding that in total there are 170 hospitalized patients in intensive care. “The virus has resumed circulating violently – he added – in Milan there are about a thousand new cases.”
