Italy to give just one COVID-19 vaccine shot to those previously infected

MILAN - Italy will administer a single vaccine dose to those who have already been infected with COVID-19, the health ministry said late Wednesday.

"A single dose of vaccine may be considered for individuals with previous SARS-CoV-2 infection, symptomatic or asymptomatic", the ministry statement said.

The recommendation applies to people diagnosed with COVID between three and six months previously.

France and Spain announced a similar policy last month, in a move that also appears to be aimed at saving vaccine shots and boosting supplies while EU countries are struggling to run their vaccination campaigns due to supply cuts imposed by drugmakers.

Italy, which has a population of around 60 million, had administered 4.76 doses of vaccines as of early Thursday, with some 1.5 million people receiving the recommended two shots. 

-reuters-

Italy coronavirus death toll tops 60,000

ROME - The death toll from COVID-19 has passed the 60,000 mark in Italy, according to an official toll published Sunday.

Restrictive measures aimed at stemming the spread of the virus were nonetheless eased in several regions as the rate of infections stabilized and pressure eased on hospitals.

Italy, the first European country to be hit by the global pandemic, has recorded 60,078 deaths from 1,728,878 infections, the health ministry reported.

Despite steps the government has taken to curb the latest outbreak and care for the sick, hundreds of people are still dying daily.

Italy saw a record 993 deaths on Thursday, the highest toll since the outbreak began in the first months of the year.

It is among the countries with the highest numbers of deaths compared to its population with 98 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants.

Its mortality rate, or the ratio of deaths to infections, stands at 3.47 percent. Only Britain has a higher rate in Europe with 3.55 percent.

By comparison, Spain's rate is 2.75 percent and France is at 2.35 percent.

Italian Health Minister Roberto Speranza warned that "if we drop our guard, we run the risk of finding ourselves in January and February facing a new (infection) surge.

"And that we cannot allow," he told SkyTG24 television. 

But the government's color-coded system of risk rating showed that several regions were deemed to be facing a lower risk, allowing inhabitants to move about more freely.

The risk was downgraded from red, the highest level, to orange in Tuscany, Campania and the Aosta Valley, and from orange to yellow in five other regions.

On Monday, Abruzzo, the last red region, is also to turn orange, according to regional premier Marco Marilio.

On Thursday, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte outlined a set of restrictive measures to be put in place around Christmas.

He announced a ban on movements between regions from December 21 until January 6, including for Italians who wanted to spend time in second homes. 

There is also a ban on moving from one town to another for December 25 and 26 as well as on January 1. 

A curfew from 10 pm until 5 am remains in place, lasting until 7 am on New Year's Day.

Ski slopes and mechanical lifts are to remain closed until January 7.

Agence France-Presse

Disinfecting non-stop as Italy faces two new virus outbreaks

ROME - Yellow police tape -- a familiar sight across Italy since the coronavirus began sweeping the country in March -- reappeared at the weekend outside a Rome squat where around 15 new cases have emerged.

Health workers insist the outbreak among squatters including a Peruvian family is under control, at a time when Italy is cautiously relaxing measures to contain the disease that has claimed more than 34,000 lives.

A second outbreak was far bigger and occurred at a hospital on the western edge of Rome, with 109 cases and five deaths.

Rome's regional COVID-19 crisis center said all those who tested positive for the virus at the illegally occupied building had been transferred. All their contacts were identified and 108 tests were carried out.

After the uproar of blaring ambulances to handle the new cluster of cases, the southern working-class district of Garbatella returned to normal on Sunday, apart from the police tape and a squad car outside the building, as well as a posse of journalists.

Mask-wearing shoppers could be seen buying groceries, a man walking his dog, another throwing garbage into an overflowing bin.

"Occupants who are still in the building are confined there," a police officer told AFP, adding that the Red Cross was delivering food to them.

Many of the windows were shuttered in the orange brick block of flats, typical of the buildings that sprang up in the outskirts of Rome during the 1970s.

The squatters also receive aid from an NGO.

An employee at a nearby grocery store who gave his name only as Ion said the inhabitants were both South American and Italian, "working people, mainly families".

He added that some of the flats share toilets.

"This doesn't worry us very much," he said. "We're wearing masks and being careful."

But Raffaele, a 77-year-old who lives nearby, complained that "there is absolutely no check (on) constant comings and goings of people from all over the world."

He said he feared that such transience could help spread the coronavirus. "Let's say we are being very careful, we are disinfecting non-stop."

'NO ILLUSIONS' Meanwhile two army vehicles were stationed outside the San Raffaele Pisana hospital on Sunday, but the situation appeared under control.

Health officials said rigorous contact tracing was under way, with some 200 recent patients being tested.

The two new outbreaks of COVID-19 came as Italy was re-emerging from lockdown in a phased process that began in early May.

The epidemic appeared under control even in its epicenter in the northern Lombardy region.

"No one had any illusions that the problems were over," WHO deputy director Ranieri Guerra told Italian journalists. "It means the virus hasn't lost its infectiousness, it isn't weakening... we shouldn’t let down our guard."

However, the Italian immunologist added: "Such micro-outbreaks were inevitable, but they are limited in time and space. And today we have the tools to intercept them and confine them."

Italy, which went under nationwide quarantine on March 10, has been one of the hardest-hit countries in the world by COVID-19, mostly in the north. 

Agence France-Presse

Italy awaits details of life after lockdown

ROME - Italy announced plans Saturday to set price limits on face masks and ramp up antibody testing as it nears the end of the world's longest active national lockdown.

The Mediterranean country is awaiting a decision this weekend about which of its coronavirus restrictions will be lifted when the current regime expires on May 3.

This will determine both the pace at which the eurozone's third-largest economy claws its way out of the coronavirus crisis and the freedoms 60 million Italians will enjoy in the summer months.

Prime Minster Giuseppe Conte has reportedly been presented with a cautious proposal that involves a gradual easing of restrictions over four weeks.

Italians will probably be allowed to leave their homes freely for the first time since March 9 by early May.

Parks could reopen and the nation can start working its way out of its most traumatic experience since World War II.

But reports say the vision laid out before Conte does not resemble life as Italians knew it.

Italy's official death toll of 26,384 is still Europe's highest and only second globally to the United States.

"The coronavirus has been weakened but not defeated," emergency response commissioner Domenico Arcuri told reporters.

"Everyone understands this."

'ITALY IS BACK'

Media reports say that restaurants will only resume takeout service and almost everything else will stay shut on May 4.

The government might reopen museums on May 18 in a bid to send an "optimistic message to the world that Italy (with prudence and caution) is back," the Corriere della Sera newspaper wrote.

Yet even these incremental steps will be reversed at the first sign of the rate of daily infections rising.

The Italian outbreak has been ebbing for some weeks.

The ISS public health institute said an infected person was now spreading the virus to between 0.2 and 0.7 others nationally -- a range low enough to start a safe lockdown exit.

Italy's "Phase Two" involves mandatory use of face masks in public places and antibody testing nationwide.

"We will set the maximum price at which face masks can be sold," Arcuri said.

The Italian commissioner did not say whether people would be required to wear them outdoors.

The serological tests are designed to help determine how many people have already had the virus and potentially become immune.

The production of accurate antibody tests is only just starting and the World Health Organization reiterated Saturday that "there is currently no evidence" that a person cannot develop COVID-19 twice.

But Milan's northern Lombardy region -- at the Italian outbreak's epicenter since at least February -- began the first wide-scale use of the tests on Thursday.

Arcuri said about 150,000 antibody tests would start to be distributed across Italy's 20 regions on May 4.

He also cautioned that "no test in the world is 100 percent accurate".

The Italian government was aiming for an accuracy rate of "at least 95 percent," Arcuri said.

Conte was also reportedly offered the option of filling airports and train stations with thermal scanners that can flag people who are running fevers.

These would then be tested for the virus as a precaution.

Yet many infectious people without symptoms would still slip through undetected and few other countries have chosen this route.

Italy is also following EU guidelines and unrolling an app designed to alert people if they had come in contact with someone who is known to be positive.

Some doctors caution that not enough Italians have mobile phones to make this type of contact tracing work on a national scale.

Agence France-Presse