Rome - The death toll from an outbreak
of coronavirus in Italy has risen by 812 in the last 24 hours,
the Civil Protection Agency said on Monday, reversing two days
of declines.
Italy, the world's hardest hit country which accounts for
more than a third of all global fatalities, saw its total death
tally rise to 11,591 since the outbreak emerged in northern
regions on Feb. 21.
More positively, the number of new cases rose by just 4 050,
the lowest amount since March 17, reaching a total of 101 739.
However, the decline in new infections may be partly
explained by a reduction in the number of tests, which were the
fewest for six days.
Italians have been under nationwide lockdown for three weeks
and officials said the restrictions, which were due to end on
Friday, look certain for at least two more weeks.
"We have to agree on this with other regions, but I think we
are talking about (maintaining the block) until at least
mid-April," Attilio Fontana, head of the worst-affected Lombardy
region, told reporters.
The governor of the southern region of Puglia said on
Saturday the restrictions should stay until May.
Underscoring the dangers of the disease, the national
doctors' association announced the deaths of 11 more doctors on
Monday, bringing the total to 61.
Not all of them had been tested for coronavirus before they
died, it said, but it linked their deaths to the epidemic.
Lombardy, which is centred on Italy's financial capital
Milan, accounts for almost 60% of the total deaths in Italy and
some 40% of cases.
Fontana said the unprecedented curbs on movement, gatherings
and business activity were preventing an exponential rise in
cases, and needed to be kept in place.
"We're on the right track, we're maintaining a (chart) line
that's not uphill, but it's not downhill either," he said.
The head of the national health institute, Silvio
Brusaferro, who is advising the government on how to handle the
crisis, also said that for restrictions to be eased "the number
of new cases has to fall significantly."
"For sure the re-opening will happen gradually ... we are
even considering the British idea of 'stop and go', which
envisages opening things for a certain amount of time and then
closing them again," he told La Repubblica daily.