At first glance, this Friday is the darkest day in Italy since the start of the coronavirus epidemic, and even in any country in the world. 969 people died in 24 hours (counting 50 deaths which should have been counted the day before), announced the country's health authorities. This brings to 9,134 the total number of disappearances due to the Covid-19, in just over a month.
These figures do not take into account deaths in the vast majority of retirement homes but only those recorded in hospitals, as in France. But they can intrigue when the confinement was decreed throughout the country on March 9, two and a half weeks earlier.
Slower change in the number of cases
Some provinces in the north of the country had even taken such measures as of February 23. However, experts generally expect visible effects after two weeks.
Behind this apparently macabre balance sheet, the Italian situation nevertheless suggests some signs of hope. First, the number of new cases confirmed after screening is increasing more slowly. There were 5,909 in 24 hours Friday, slightly less than the day before (6,203) and during the peak of March 21 (6,557 new patients). Above all, in one day, this corresponds to an increase of 7.3%, the smallest daily development ever recorded since the start of the crisis.
This "downturn" in the curve may point to a future congestion in hospitals, even if 3,732 patients are still hospitalized in intensive care.
"The main criterion to look at is the number of patients who come to the hospital to be tested and who are diagnosed positive," insists Parisian Jean-Stéphane Dhersin, mathematician at CNRS and specialist in epidemic modeling. . And the expert to confirm that this figure is only impacted after more than two weeks of minimum confinement.
The epidemic peak not yet reached
Friday morning, the boss of the Italian Higher Institute of Health also estimated that the containment measures "had their effect", even if the epidemic peak had not yet been reached. The growth in the number of new cases "is slowing down but it is not going down" on several consecutive days, he said.
Regarding deaths, the increase was 11.2% on Friday compared to the total listed the day before. This is not the weakest development in a month, but it remains far from the 22 or 25% observed on certain days in mid-March.
New containment extension?
However, the situation remains very critical in Lombardy, the most affected region of the country. This Friday, there were since the start of the epidemic 5,201 dead (+ 11.1% compared to the previous day) and 37,198 patients (+ 7%, more than the previous Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday). Despite this, more than 8,000 hospital patients in the region have already recovered, and almost 11,000 across the country.
Newsletter - The essentials of the news
Every morning, the news seen by Le ParisienI'm registering
Your email address is collected by Le Parisien to allow you to receive our news and commercial offers. Find out more
If the situation does not evolve favorably in the coming days, the confinement, initially planned until April 3 and already extended, could be again.