Rome (AFP)

The Italians come off the mask Monday: the lights are green in the peninsula, the first country in Europe to be hit by the Covid-19 pandemic in February 2020, and where contamination has been at its lowest since the fall.

The Minister of Health signed a decree declaring the entire Italian territory "white zone", that is to say at low epidemic risk, according to the color code in place since the start of the crisis.

Wearing a mask is therefore no longer compulsory outside, a much anticipated measure from north to south of the country swept by a heat wave with temperatures that can exceed 40 ° Celsius locally.

In the streets of Rome, tourists and passers-by rejoiced to finally be able to walk around breathing freely.

"It's a relief because it's very hot," Salvatore Casuccio confided to AFPTV.

Like many people, Giulia, a young woman in her twenties, and her mother, however, continued to wear the mask for fear of the new, more contagious variants.

"We are still concerned about this situation. It is not over yet and for safety reasons, we continue to wear it", explained Giulia, equipped with an FFP2 mask.

Italians are required to have a mask on them and don it in places where the distance of one meter between people cannot be respected.

According to a survey by the Ixe 'institute carried out for the Coldiretti agricultural confederation and published on Monday, 82% of Italians say they will respect this obligation and will use their mask as soon as necessary to prevent a resurgence of the epidemic.

15% say they will use it rarely and 3% never.

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The curfew between midnight and five in the morning is also lifted from Monday in the mountainous and French-speaking region of Valle d'Aosta (north-west), the last region of Italy where it was still in force.

A third of Italians over 12 have been vaccinated, or more than 17.5 million people, according to the government.

Tourists from the European Union, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and Japan are now back after the lifting of the quarantine requirement for visitors vaccinated or with a negative test.

The Minister of Health, however, called for caution in the face of the threat of the Delta variant in particular.

"The results are encouraging, but vigilance and caution are called for, in particular because of the new variants," said Roberto Speranza after signing the decree.

"The battle is not yet won".

The prevalence of the Delta variant, first detected in India, was 16.8% on June 21, down from 4.2% in May, health officials said on Friday.

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The very first country in Europe to have experienced an outbreak of Covid-19 contagion in the first quarter of 2020, Italy is one of the countries most seriously affected by the pandemic, with more than 4.25 million infections and 127,472 deaths .

© 2021 AFP