The peak of infections is behind us, but there are still no signs of decreasing patients admitted to intensive care and this is compromising the health care of thousands of patients not affected by Covid. To explain it, in an interview with Fanpage.it, the professor Giorgio Parisi, president of the Accademia dei Lincei and one of the most respected Italian physicists in the world, a scientist who since the beginning of the health emergency has dedicated himself to the study of the data and the progress of the infection of the Sars Cov 2 epidemic. We interviewed him to take stock of the situation and try to predict when, in addition to infections, the pressure on hospitals and the number of deaths will decrease. Finally we talked about vaccines and the most important bet: that of being able to administer 500 thousand doses a day and keep up with the supplies that – if the contracts are respected – will arrive starting in the next few days.
Parisi: “At this rate we will halve the infections in two months”
Professor, we have reached and exceeded the peak of infections of the third wave?
Yes, looking at the weekly average of cases, the peak was reached last Thursday and now the curve is finally down.
A good news…
Yes, that the cases are not increasing is excellent news, but there is no need to cheer. In fact, the trend is of a 10% weekly decrease in infections, therefore very slow. At this rate it will take two months to halve the infections. Obviously we are not yet seeing the effects of the latest red zones introduced by the government, but I hope they will arrive within a few days.
How do you explain this slow decline in infections?
The third wave began with an already very high number of infections inherited from the second wave. In these conditions it is very difficult to carry out an accurate epidemiological investigation, nor do we know precisely how many employees are involved in the tracing, consequently the virus was able to spread with a certain ease, also thanks to the greater contagiousness of the English variant.
Is it possible to recover lost ground on the layout?
In fact, it is an enormous job: the patient must be identified, then all his contacts traced and called to ascertain their state of health. Each patient requires at least one day of work to track down 30/50 people. Try to do it, with more than twenty thousand infections a day. On the other hand, the Istituto Superiore di Sanità itself had been clear: the forces available would be enough for no more than 5 thousand cases a day, a quarter of the current ones. In Wuhan, China, after the discovery of the virus, they mobilized 1,800 teams of 5 people to carry out a sweeping epidemiological investigation.
Saturated intensive care, assistance to non-Covid patients at risk
The infections are decreasing, but the same thing does not happen with the employment of intensive care …
No, that figure is still increasing by about 10% per week and in several regions the maximum employment threshold (of 30%, ed.) Has been far exceeded: where this happens there are serious problems in guaranteeing health care for patients. who do not have Covid, because obviously all the other diseases have not disappeared. It is difficult, under these conditions, to establish precisely when the intensive care wards will begin to empty, but I believe that this could happen around the first days of April in conjunction with a peak in deaths, which could reach 500 per day, I hope not beyond, but will also depend on the greater lethality of the English variant. In these conditions it would be crazy to reopen everything after Easter, although of course I hope that some restrictions can be relaxed. It will depend on how things go next week …
Vaccines: “We will soon be flooded with Pfizer”
The vaccination campaign is continuing among many difficulties. How do you judge what has been done so far?
Some regions are performing better than others, but all in all I believe that they are keeping pace with the vaccines delivered since, out of 9,911,100, 86.7% have been administered. But now comes the fun …
What do you mean?
According to what was announced soon we should be inundated with doses of Pfizer vaccines: if the contract is respected by the end of March, about 4.5 million doses should arrive, then from April to June another 21 million, or 7 million per month. Considering also the vaccines of Johnson & Johnson, Moderna and AstraZeneca we will soon have to be able to increase our capacity to administer vaccines to 400,000, then to 500,000 per day. A great logistical and organizational effort will be required. I am optimistic.
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