"At the Scientific and Technical Committee meeting this morning, it was agreed that all containment measures should be extended until at least Easter," Roberto Speranza, Italian Minister of Health, said on Monday March 30. Easter celebrations end on Monday, April 13, a holiday in Italy.

While the country is most mourning for the coronavirus pandemic and the population has been confined for almost three weeks, the Minister of Health indicated that "the government will go in this direction".

Italy, which has still recorded 812 deaths in the last 24 hours, Monday, nevertheless shows encouraging signs of an imminent control of the contagion. However, the authorities call for caution and the continued efforts required of the 60 million Italians.

Decrease in positive cases in Lombardy

Since the start of the pandemic, more than 11,500 people have died in Italy, but the increase in new positive cases announced on Monday has never been lower, with an increase of + 4%, half the amount there is four days (8.3%), and four times less than a fortnight ago.

Above all, for the first time since the start of the pandemic in Italy, the number of people currently positive in Lombardy, the Italian region most affected, fell (25,006 against 25,392 Sunday). However, this decrease will have to be repeated to draw a solid trend.

In addition, the number of people considered healed across the country (1,590) has never been so high in a daily report.

"We can hope to reach the peak in seven or ten days, then, reasonably, a decline in contagion," Deputy Health Minister Pierpaolo Sileri said Monday morning.

"Very progressive" reduction

In the daily La Repubblica, the head of the Higher Institute of Health, Silvio Brusaferro, called for further efforts to confirm this trend. "We must respect the measures of the government and be very careful about the isolation of the positives or their relatives," he insisted.

Governor of Lombardy, Attilio Fontana, regretted a relaxation. "Unfortunately, today, (...), I saw more people and cars, as if the relative and discreet good news of these last days had made that our fellow citizens no longer feel obliged to respect the rules ", he said during his daily press briefing.

Its head of health, Giulio Gallera, outbid, warning that these efforts should be continued "for many months", because "even when we have successfully stopped the virus, the risk of resumption of contagion will be very high".

In an interview with the Spanish daily El Pais, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said it was "reasonable to think that we are close to the peak" of contagion. But any easing of the measures "when the scientific committee says that the curve starts to go down" will have to be "very progressive", he warned.

With AFP

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