Italy reported a second successive drop in daily deaths and infections from a coronavirus that has nevertheless claimed more than 6,000 lives in a month.
The Mediterranean country has now seen its daily fatalities come down from a world record 793 on Saturday to 651 on Sunday and 601 on Monday.
The number of new declared infections fell from 6,557 on Saturday to 4,789 on Monday.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Giulio Gallera, the health and welfare regional minister for Milan’s devastated Lombardy region appeared on television smiling for the first time in many weeks.
“We cannot declare victory just yet, but there is light at the end of the tunnel,” Gallera said.
Italian National Institute of Health President Silvio Brusaferro was more guarded.
“These are positive numbers, but I do not have the courage to firmly state that there is a downward trend,” Brusaferro told reporters.
Germany on Monday announced that it had accepted the Italian government’s request to care for some of the sick, with six patients to be transferred to hospitals in Dresden and Leipzig, in the eastern state of Saxony.
Italians would desperately hope that weeks of living under a lockdown in which even a jog in the park was eventually banned was the price worth paying for beating back the new disease.
Saturday’s record toll was followed by a late-night address to the nation in which Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte announced the additional closure of “non-essential” factories.
His government also banned travel to help a country that turned into the new epicenter of the pandemic last week get through a critical stretch in which restrictions are supposed to finally show results.
“Now more than ever, everyone’s commitment is needed,” Italian Minister of Health Roberto Speranza said after Monday’s figures came out.
Italy’s toll now stands at 6,077 — more than that of China and third-placed Spain combined.
Italy has sacrificed its economy and liberties by closing and banning almost everything to halt the spread of a virus the government views as an existential threat.
The nation has rallied around its exhausted doctors and tried to deal with life under a state of emergency with humor and grace.
Entire city blocks have organized balcony parties with nightly DJs. There have been singalongs and synchronized rounds of applause.
However, Italians’ nerves were clearly starting to fray and the pushback on social media against ever-changing rules and tightening regulations was getting strong.
Twitter posts went viral ridiculing mayors and regional chiefs who threatened to jail joggers and fine people for walking their dogs too far from their homes.
The government’s new partial ban of seemingly random industries added to an air of confusion in the face of a disease Conte has called Italy’s biggest disaster since World War II.
Auto part makers were allowed to stay open, but steel mills were shut. News stands could still operate, but book stores could not.
The reality is that Conte’s team is running out of things to close or ban.
Other nations are also watching the Italian numbers to see if Conte’s ban-everything tactics work.
Italy is on the frontline of a war against a disease being fought by means that restrict freedoms and devastate economies.
Some are starting to openly ask if this price is too high — even as the global death toll soars.
Officials pleaded with the nation of 60 million — people accustomed to celebrating life outdoors deep into the night — to sacrifice individual liberties for the common good for two weeks.
The initial restrictions placed on the northern epicenter of the pandemic around Milan expired on Sunday and the national measures are set to end today.
Conte said last week that he might need to extend the restrictions indefinitely.
His decision is expected within days.
“If everyone — and I stress everyone — respects our bans, we will emerge from this very difficult test first,” Conte said on Monday.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion