Italy, facing Europe’s worst coronavirus outbreak, introduced drastic measures to contain it. But now people are nervous and as experts predict the economic consequences will be severe, some are now saying the crisis has been exaggerated.
The Italian government argued on Thursday that more cases have been detected in the country compared to elsewhere in Europe because the authorities have been more thorough in looking for the virus.
“Italy has carried out about 10,000 swab tests, but we cannot […] be faulted for being one of the countries that has done the most checks,” Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio said in Rome.
Nonetheless, as he addressed the foreign press, Di Maio was keen to present Italy as a country that is still safe for foreign tourists and investors, and to downplay the extent of the outbreak.
Di Maio also lamented what he called “deeply damaging” fake news circulating about the outbreak, which he blamed for driving countries to issue travel warnings or restrict travel to Italy.
“In Italy we have gone from a risk of epidemic to a risk of infodemic from blatant disinformation, which is damaging our tourism inflows, our businesses and our economic fabric,” he said.
Di Maio’s complaint about the travel restrictions comes weeks after Italy was itself criticized by Beijing for being the sole country in Europe to stop direct flight connections to and from China.
The minister stressed that the 11 towns currently under lockdown in Veneto and neighbouring Lombardy, as part of measures to contain the outbreak, represent only 0.089 per cent of the Italian population.
Meanwhile, Italy’s representative on the board of the World Health Organization (WHO), Walter Ricciardi, told Thursday’s Corriere della Sera newspaper there may be a problem with the statistics.
“There is a serious chance that the positives are being overestimated” given the way the authorities carried out testing for the virus, said Ricciardi, who is also a government advisor on the subject.
He singled out for criticism the Veneto region, which had initially been more liberal in deciding who to test for the virus.
At the start of the outbreak, the region tested anyone who was suspected of being ill, instead of focusing only on people with symptoms, or who had returned from China or who had been in contact with people known to be infected, as recommended by the WHO.
This fuelled “confusion and alarm” and has likely led to exaggerations in the statistics, Ricciardi said.
He stated that Italy’s National Health Institute (ISS) has verified “about 190 cases.”
The ISS is currently reviewing all the cases that have been announced by the Civil Protection Agency.
Later on Thursday, the Civil Protection Agency issued its latest numbers for those infected, which have reached 650, and, for the first time, the number of cases that the ISS has certified: 282 by their count.
Agency chief Angelo Borrelli added that the ISS had not found any false positives in the numbers it had verified so far.
The anxiety over the statistics comes as the country’s industrial powerhouse risk being brought to a virtual standstill.
The two virus clusters associated with the current outbreak are in Veneto and Lombardy, regions where much of Italy’s economic activity is located, and home to the famous cities of Venice and Milan.
From there, the virus is believed to have spread to 10 other Italian regions and provinces, as well as several European nations.
As the number of infections continues to rise, officials in Italy were also keen to report good news, and highlighted the growing number of recovering patients – 42 by the latest count.
“Our country is stronger than the new coronavirus,” Health Minister Roberto Speranza said, praising the national health service’s response to the emergency.
Borrelli said only 248 out of Italy’s 650 coronavirus cases have required hospitalization, including 56 people who are in intensive care. The rest are expected to remain isolated at home, where they will recover from the virus.
“We need to stay calm” as 95 per cent of patients will not require serious medical treatment, Giuseppe Ippolito, an infectious disease expert from Rome’s Spallanzani hospital, said.
In Veneto and Lombardy schools, universities, theatres and monuments remained closed, including the landmark St Mark’s Basilica in Venice, but some restrictions have been eased.
In Milan, for example, the Duomo cathedral was due to reopen to the public. And the people of Milan were able to enjoy their aperitif rituals again after a ban on bars remaining open after 6 pm was lifted, although with some limitations.
“Milan, the whole of Italy needs to keep going, we cannot hide like this in fear, because otherwise it’s the end,” a Milanese resident told Corriere della Sera.
