Italy posts new jump in virus fatalities and increases lockdown fines
Italy on Tuesday reported 743 new deaths from the novel coronavirus epidemic, a jump after two straight days of declining figures that dampened optimism about a soon-to-peak outbreak.
In the previous two days, there were 650 and 602 new Covid-19 fatalities, in a steady decline from a record 793 registered on Saturday.
Yet, the Italian Civil Protection Agency also gave some encouraging news, as its bulletin showed a smaller daily increase in the total of currently infected patients.
The number rose by around 3,600 to more than 54,000. On Monday the daily variation was 3,780, on Sunday 3,957, and on Saturday a whopping 4,821.
The total death toll reached 6,820, up 12.2 per cent, while overall infections, including deaths and recoveries, climbed to 69,176, a daily increase of 8.2 per cent.
Italy is facing the world’s most severe coronavirus crisis, and has been under a national lockdown, with limited exceptions, since March 10.
Fines for those who flout stay-at-home orders will increase to 400- 3,000 euros (430-3,230 dollars), Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said after a cabinet meeting.
Until now, ignoring government restrictions on freedom of movement could lead to up to three months’ imprisonment or fines of up to 206 euros.
Meanwhile, two officials on the forefront of the health emergency suggested that grim contagion figures were likely even worse than indicated by official data.
Read also: Britain reports jump in Covid-19 deaths as lockdown begins
The mayor of Bergamo, a town near Milan at the epicentre of the crisis, said the 112 Covid-19 fatalities registered in his province on Monday were only a quarter of the total death toll.
Nearly all of those who died without being counted as infected were old people diagnosed with pneumonia, a typical Covid-19 symptom, Mayor Giorgio Gori told an audience of foreign journalists.
Gori said his “non-scientific” assessment of the real death toll “gives a more representative measure of the scale of the tragedy we are experiencing here.”
In Bergamo, the local crematorium is overwhelmed with coffins. Last week the army had to step in to take dozens of them for cremation in other cities.
Civil Protection Agency Chief Angelo Borrelli told La Repubblica newspaper that for every official Covid-19 death there are probably 10 undetected, asymptomatic coronavirus cases.
The scale of one to ten “is credible,” he said.
The Italian outbreak started on February 20, and has pushed hospitals in Lombardy, the region including Bergamo and Milan, near breaking point. They are short of doctors, nurses, ventilators and masks.
Domenico Arcuri, a special commissioner for the health sector, said hospital beds in respiratory and infective disease wards have been quadrupled in the wake of the epidemic, to more than 26,000.
Still, according to Matteo Villa, a researcher at the ISPI think tank, Lombardy and Liguria – another northern region – have completely run out of intensive care places.
In Lombardy, a special advisor recruited to turn part of Milan’s former exhibition centre into an emergency hospital for Covid-19 patients, announced that he himself had contracted the disease.
“I have a bit of a temperature, no other symptoms at the moment,” 70-year-old Guido Bertolaso, a former Civil Protection Agency chief, wrote on Facebook. (dpa)
