The government has decided to extend the state of emergency, launched on 31 January and expiring on 31 July, until December 31 2020. They have decided so, according to reports from the newspaper The print, the Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte, and the Minister of Health, Roberto Speranza. The reason would be the fact that in our country we continue to register too high a number of new infections and outbreaks.
The objective of the extension is to allow the executive to approve urgent measures such as the Dpcm without going through Parliament. Furthermore, in conditions of a state of emergency, the Civil Protection can purchase masks and all that is needed without tender procedures or competitions. Just yesterday Commissioner Domenico Arcuri announced that to reopen schools to pupils it will be necessary to buy something like ten million masks a day.
The measure could therefore arrive as early as the week: Tuesday 14 July the Dpcm in force will expire, the one that contains, among other things, the methods of entry into Italy and the suspension of cruises. It is "very probable", say government sources, that this could be an opportunity to define the extension, rearrange the rules currently in force and for a "systematic" of the methods of entry into our country. Two stages are envisaged: Minister Speranza will report to Parliament on the new Dpcm which will extend the anti-contagion rules expiring on the 14th. For the extension of the state of emergency, which expires on July 31, a Dpcm is not required but a resolution in the Council of Ministers, on which Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte will report to Parliament. This is what sources from Palazzo Chigi specified, when asked about the vote that awaits the Chambers next week.
Meanwhile, to reduce the risk of new imported outbreaks, an ordinance signed by Minister Speranza has ordered the prohibition of entry and transit in Italy for those who have stayed in or passed through the territory of 13 countries in the previous fourteen days: Armenia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Brazil, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Chile, Kuwait, North Macedonia, Moldova, Oman, Panama, Peru and the Dominican Republic.
“The pandemic is in its most acute phase in the world – he said Hope – We cannot frustrate the sacrifices made by the Italians in recent months", so the path chosen was that of "maximum prudence".
Along the same lines Tale: “In Italy we have prepared a very sophisticated contagion monitoring plan between the various regions. We cannot allow positive and unmonitored people to arrive from foreign countries. This is why we have provided for a series of restrictions for countries outside the EU. For example, in the last few days citizens from Bangladesh have arrived and we have discovered that they are more than 70% positive. Their exit was not controlled and we were forced to suspend flights from Bangladesh".
"You shouldn't be surprised if the decision will be to extend the state of emergency" beyond July 31 "because if we didn't extend it, we would no longer even have the means and tools to continue monitoring, to be able to intervene", he added to late morning the Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte, during a press conference in Venice. We are reasonably moving towards the extension of the state of emergency, given that it is a decision, he remarked, that the Council of Ministers must take collegially.
On the way up the newly infected with Covid-19: The daily tally reached 229 on Thursday, versus 193 on Thursday. However, the number of patients with Covid-69 in intensive care dropped to 19, two less than the previous day.
Updated July 12, 2020
