Julio Algañaraz
08/12/2020 - 11:53
- Clarín.com
- World
According to official calculations, one hundred thousand Italians spend the summer in Greece, Spain, Croatia, Malta and France, all countries now at high risk due to the growing number of coronavirus infections. Among those one hundred thousand a good part takes the infections abroad and others will bring them home, adding to the millions of adolescents and young adults (and not so much), transgressors of the movement in the cities and spas.
Neither wears a chinstrap. They crowd on beaches and nightclubs: They don't wash their hands or keep safe distances. These transgressions will be a challenge that will reach its test this Saturday 15, the day of Ferragosto, an ancient Roman festival from the time of Augustus, of bread and circus that announced the end of the great heat.
A large mobilization of police, carabinieri, municipal agents will face the situation and promise fines and closures of stores in bulk.
What is Coronavirus? How is it spread and what are its symptoms?
Watch the specialItalian regions that see infection rates rise in unsuspected places like Sicily, Puglia and other places in the south, announce general controls to detect infected.
But the masses of tourists by moving train that push in the airports, the routes and the ports, are very difficult to control.
Spotlights everywhere
The latest data on Tuesday showed a new jump to 462 infected. The lights are growing everywhere. They are often played by small groups of young people and families. Or, unexpectedly, the novices and friars of the convent of San Francisco in Assisi. Twenty-five of them have been infected.
Look also
Coronavirus in the World: photos of life in times of pandemic
In Lombardy, there are already 130 infested from an agricultural company in Mantua. In Treviso, the number of infected people in a center for immigrants reaches 257. In Piedmont, 30 young people gathered in a nightclub in Vercelli ended up under sanitary control and are infested.
Every day there are outbreaks that, as in the Lazio region (Rome) reveal new “clusters” of young people who traveled to Malta and Croatia . Also in the Sanctuary of Divine Amore, six infected from Greece were detected. In all cases, sanitary controls and isolation of the infected are applied.
In Ragusa and Ciracusa, Sicily region, 21 young people who emigrated to Malta on vacation from the movement have been isolated, the same as 13 others in Arezzo and the Siena area, in Tuscany.
Cameras that detect body temperature in Milan's central station. Photo: EFE
At airports, strict control is difficult because at Fiumicino (Rome) and Malpensa (Milan), international stopovers such as Bologna, Bergamo, Venice, Napoli, Pisa and the island airports of Sicily and Sardinia are added.
In Naples the infected rose by 24 cases in a week. In fifteen days they have doubled.
The government plan
The government announced a plan to face the autumn-winter, very complicated by the reopening of schools and universities that will move more than 12 million people per day among students, professors, teachers, school personnel and families.
This is one of the biggest unknowns. The government remembers what happened in March, after the start of the pandemic on February 21. There was an overload of territorial and assistance services. Saturation of the beds, of the Intensive Care units, which forced the doctors to choose which patient to intubate to receive oxygen and which to let die.
The government plan includes four alternatives , which revolve around the fatality rate RT, which is critical beyond 1.
Sign with restrictions on a beach in Ostia. Photo: EFE
In the first alternative, with the transmission index RT 1 generally firm, the system will hold up well. In the second, if the greater spread of the virus does not put hospitals in critical condition, the difficulties will be overcome. In alternative 3, serious problems will arise if it is not possible to trace all those infected. In the worst case, number 4, with the RT index that exceeds 1.5, "a scenario of this type would lead to clear signs of overload of the healthcare system, without the possibility of tracing new cases of positivity".
The central government and the regions, according to the plan, are called to increase the number of beds and posts for Intensive Care. Supplies of consumables, instrumentation and diagnostic devices are accumulating, plus drugs of all kinds. If the most critical alternatives 3 and 4 are presented, hospitals will be organized in the most difficult areas to isolate the positives.
Preparations will also be made to send patients to other regions and new structures will be opened. More respirators and protective devices are already being purchased.
Room with Covid patients in a hospital in Bergamo. Photo: Reuters
The Army is also preparing a plan to be present in these general alternatives, including with field hospitals as occurred during the most terrible moments of the pandemic between March and May, in which most of the 35,200 deaths that it has suffered occurred. Italy until now.
The Deputy Minister of Health Pierpaolo Sileri said that it is necessary to observe with great attention and concern the countries of northern Europe, where the more rigid temperature that looms with the boreal autumn at the end of August “could show an increase in the circulation of the virus ”.
The phenomenon will serve as an anticipation "of what may happen in Italy when the coldest temperature will arrive, at the end of September-October."
Sileri said he is not afraid of what may happen with the reopening of schools in mid-September. “We must get used to living with the virus . We have effective measures to defend ourselves: the mask, the safety distance, the disinfection measures, wash our hands frequently ”.
41% of Italians do not want to be vaccinated
The continuous announcements about the vaccines that everyone expects, rekindled in Italy the controversies about the voluntary or mandatory nature that the application must have at a massive level to be effective. Prime Minister Cesare Conte said that no one would be forced to get vaccinated. This announcement produced protests because it entrusted the policy of fighting the virus to personal initiative. In Italy there is still a “No VAX” movement against compulsory vaccination.
A poll showed that the opposition is consistent. 41% of those consulted answered with a "no" to the question if they would be vaccinated against Covid-19.
The virologist and university academic Fabrizio Pregliasco spoke out for mandatory vaccination . "In our country there is a strong group of opposites, distributed between deniers of the utility of getting vaccinated and plotters who attribute vaccination to shady practices."
"With such intransigent subjects there is no valid reason. There are 15% undecided and they will be positively dragged if mandatory vaccination is imposed."
Rome, correspondent
AP