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HEALTH

EXPLAINED: Has Italy’s coronavirus second wave reached its peak?

There were hopeful signs reported by Italy’s health authorities this week, but experts warn there's a long way to go before we're out of the epidemic. Just how much is the situation really improving?

Published: 27 November 2020 10:33 CET
Updated: 29 November 2020 14:48 CET
EXPLAINED: Has Italy’s coronavirus second wave reached its peak?
Medical workers move an intensive care patient at the newly built Columbus Covid 2 temporary hospital in Rome. AFP

Experts predicted earlier this month that the number of new infections recorded during Italy’s coronavirus second wave would peak on Friday November 27th.

In fact, data now shows that the curve started to drop a few days earlier.

READ ALSO: Where to find the latest Covid-19 information for your region of Italy

Trento University physicist Roberto Battiston said on Thursday that Italy’s curve was starting to fall – as he had predicted on November 12th.

According to his calculations, the national Rt number, or transmission rate, is now dropping below 1.

But Battiston warned that “having reached the peak does not mean that we are out of the epidemic, but rather that we are in the most acute phase.”

In an interview with Italian newspaper La Repubblica on Friday, he warned politicians and the public that the apparently improving picture did not mean it was time to “loosen our guard.”

“Even if the overall data indicates the beginning of a descent, there are Italian regions which are still far from the peak,” he said.

Which parts of Italy are seeing the most improvement?

Large regional variations in the coronavirus situation mean that, while Battiston says he is certain that the hard-hit Lombardy and Piedmont regions had already reached the peak of new infections, in Veneto “the number of infected is still growing: the climb should, however, stop in two or three days.”

The number of current infections will peak in Emilia-Romagna by December 8th, he said.

IN GRAPHS: Track the spread of coronavirus in every region of Italy

The number of hospitalizations and intensive care admissions in these areas will peak within a couple of days after the number of infections starts to fall, he explained.

“But then there are regions which still very far from the peak,” he said, naming Abruzzo, Basilicata, Sicily, Sardinia and Puglia.

“The projections tell us that the peak could be reached there at Christmas.”

“In these areas of the country the epidemic is rising again, the Rt goes down too slowly, with frequent oscillations,” he explained. “This is a sign that something is not working.”

The president of Gimbe, Italy’s evidence-based medicine foundation, said that the change would be more gradual this time than during the first wave.

“The effects of the containment measures are also beginning to manifest themselves on the curves of hospitalization and intensive care”, Dr Nino Cartabellotta told Italian news agency Dire.

He pointed out that this “tends to take on the appearance of a plateau, rather than a peak similar to that recorded in the first wave.”

“Therefore it will take much longer to ease the pressure on hospitals than last spring, because the extent of the current containment measures is significantly lower than the total lockdown,”

Would it be safe to relax coronavirus restrictions in December?

The first hopeful signs come as the government this week works on the next set of coronavirus rules, set to come in from December 4th and to cover the Christmas period.

READ ALSO: 'A different kind of Christmas': What will Italy's coronavirus rules be over the holidays?

Though little has yet been officially confirmed by ministers, Italian media is speculating about the possible removal of current restrictions – including shop closures in red zones and the nationwide  evening curfew – before or during Christmas.

Battiston slammed the suggestion of relaxing restrictions at this point as “playing with dynamite”.

“It would cause an explosion,” he told Repubblica.

“I repeat that we are at the peak of the second wave,” he said. “It is as if, in the middle of the peak last time at the end of April, when there were 110,000 active infected, we were asked to reopen.”

“In fact things reopened in June, when the number of infected had dropped to a tenth of that. Today, it should be remembered, the number of currently infected is above 800,000.”

The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) has warned EU member of the risks of revoking restrictive measures too early.

According to its most recent predictive models, revoking restrictions around either December 7th or 21st would lead to a rise in hospitalizations, respectively around Christmas or in the first week of January 2021.

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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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