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HEALTH

MAP: Where in Italy are coronavirus cases falling fastest?

The number of new coronavirus cases being detected in Italy continues to decline overall, but the situation varies considerably across the country.

Published: 6 May 2021 18:34 CEST
MAP: Where in Italy are coronavirus cases falling fastest?
Restaurants are now open, for outdoor service only, in areas with lower case numbers. Photo: Filippo Monteforte/AFP/DataWrapper

As the Italian government announced its plan for gradual reopening at the end of April, health experts and doctors’ unions warned that it would not be safe to reopen until certain criteria were met.

These included having a seven-day average incidence rate of 50 cases per 100,000 – a rate which experts say is low enough to allow effective testing and tracing.

The most recent weekly health data report, compiled by Italian health ministry and the Higher Health Institute (ISS), showed another decrease in the weekly incidence rate: down to 146 per 100,000 inhabitants in the week ending April 25th from 157 per 100,000 for the week ending April 18th.

“Although the vaccination campaign is progressing faster and faster, overall, the incidence remains high and is still far from the level (50 per 100,000) that would allow the containment of new cases,” stated the report.

This figure is a national average, and the situation varies considerably around the country – as do the current restrictions in place, which can change depending on the weekly health data in each Italian region.

But no region is yet below the 50 in 100,000 threshold.

The figure is currently highest in Valle d’Aosta (204 per 100,000) and Campania (191), and lowest in Molise (64) and Sardinia (68).

Six regions currently remain under tighter coronavirus restrictions, in part due to the higher infection rates locally.

However most regions are now designated lower-risk ‘yellow’ zones, where many restrictions on business openings and movement have been relaxed.

It won’t be known what impact these initial reopenings have had on the infection rate until data becomes available in mid-May, when further relaxations to the rules are planned.

READ ALSO: Schools, restaurants, gyms, travel: Here’s Italy’s new timetable for reopening

It’s expected that the number of new infections will start to drop faster as Italy’s vaccination campaign progresses.

However, Italian authorities don’t expect to have the majority of people in the country vaccinated until autumn, and say that continued health measures are the only way to get numbers down in the meantime.

Even those who have received the first dose of the vaccine must “continue to be cautious”, said ISS president Silvio Brusaferro at a press conference on Friday.

“First of all because it takes two to three weeks before a first immune response forms, which is complete after the second dose. Masks and distancing will still be needed until a large part of the population is vaccinated, because even those who are immunized cannot exclude the risk of infecting those who are not.”

Around 25 percent of Italy’s population has had one dose of the vaccine so far, while just over ten percent is fully vaccinated, official figures show.

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STATISTICS

Are Italy’s workplaces more dangerous than elsewhere in Europe?

Following reports of yet another deadly workplace accident in Italy, does the country really perform worse than its European neighbours when it comes to worker safety?

Published: 8 May 2024 10:48 CEST
Are Italy’s workplaces more dangerous than elsewhere in Europe?

On Monday, five workers maintenance workers were killed on the island of Sicily after inhaling poisonous fumes at a sewage treatment plant.

This latest tragedy follows the high-profile deaths of five workers at a Florence construction site in February, and the deaths of seven workers in an explosion at a hydroelectric plant outside Bologna in April.

The frequency with which these stories appear in the headlines can make it seem like there’s a major workplace incident every other week in Italy.

The issue even made it into this year’s Sanremo music festival with Paolo Jannacci and Stefano Massini’s performance of L’Uomo nel lampo (‘The man in the flash’), introduced by host Amadeus with a sombre reflection on the number of people killed on the job in Italy every day (around three).

READ ALSO: Rome square filled with coffins in protest over Italy’s workplace deaths

But does Italy really perform significantly worse than the rest of Europe when it comes to worker protections, or does it just sometimes feel that way?

According to data from the European Commission’s statistics office, Eurostat, in 2021 (the most recent year for which data is available) Italy had the eighth highest number of fatalities out of the 27 EU countries, with 2.66 deaths per 100,000 workers – worse than Spain and Portugal, but better than France and Austria.

The worst three countries for worker deaths were Latvia, with 4.29 deaths per 100,000, followed by Lithuania (3.75) and Malta (3.34); while the three least-fatal countries for workers were Finland (0.75), Greece (0.58) and Holland (0.33).

Workplace deaths in Europe in 2021. Source: Eurostat

If you look at Eurostat’s standardised incidence rates – which adjust for the fact that domestic economies rely to a greater or lesser extent on different industries that carry different levels of worker risk – Italy remains in eighth place, but performs slightly worse, with more than 3 deaths per 100,000.

Data from Italy’s state-run Workers Compensation Authority, INAIL, shows that worker deaths in Italy dropped from more than ten per day in the early 1960’s to around one third that number in the early 90’s, but haven’t significantly declined since then.

INAIL figures also show that 191 people died at work in the first quarter of 2024 – no worse than any time in the past decade, when the numbers have consistently hovered around 200.

That’s not good enough for workers’ rights groups, who say those in power are failing to enforce adequate worker safety protections.

The Palermo chapter of workers union CGIL staged a general strike and a protest outside the city’s prefecture on Tuesday, following a national protest calling for better worker safety protections last month.

Cardboard coffins fill Rome’s Piazza del Popolo on March 19th in a protest drawing attention to the number of deaths at work in Italy. Photo by Tiziana FABI / AFP.

“A business model based on contracts, subcontracts and precariousness is a model that kills,” CGIL general secretary Maurizio Landini told reporters.

Unions are calling for “continuous and comprehensive inspections, supervision of the contracting system, and more attention to the training of workers.”

Initial reports showed that none of the workers who died on Monday were wearing personal protective equipment. One was retired, and two were not technically qualified to carry out the works.

Italian President Sergio Mattarella described the incident as “yet another unacceptable workplace massacre,” adding that he hoped that “full light will be shed” on the causes of the accident.

In a 2023 report, INAIL’s supervisory board noted that the authority had a significant budget surplus, but that it couldn’t be used for accident prevention because current regulations ringfence the funds for compensation payouts.

The authority’s exclusive focus on building up financial reserves for insurance claims while neglecting to fund worker safety initiatives is counter-productive, the board wrote, “perpetuating a vicious circle that diverts resources needed for prevention by pouring them into the Treasury in excess of real needs.”

Instead of simply building up reserves, they argue, the institute should focus its efforts on “decisive intervention” to reduce workplace accidents, “including through the funding of prevention initiatives”.

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