‘This is a vaccination scandal in the making’: our correspondent on the Italian corona approach

Hello Rosa, in Rome you will go from red to orange on Tuesday. What are you allowed to do all at once?

“The schools are opening, and non-essential shops. It will all close again on Saturday due to the so-called ‘Easter lockdown’. When we have done that, we will go back to the regional approach, where decisions are made every week on the basis of no fewer than 21 different indicators which color a region has. Nobody can make sense of that now, so we just let it come to us and we’ll see. ”

Why does the Italian government have such a regional policy?

“The national government wants stricter measures than the regional governments. What is happening in Sicily has nothing to do with the situation in Rome, so the logic of that regional policy makes sense. But it swings a lot and it is confused. ”

“In theory, regional policy should create clarity, because each color has a fixed set of measures. But the new Italian government has changed those measures again. For example, under the current prime minister Mario Draghi, the hairdressers have to close at red, while they were allowed to remain open under his predecessor Guiseppe Conte. Conte’s hair is a lot better than Draghi’s, maybe that’s the reason for the change. ”

What do you find most difficult about the Italian corona policy?

“That they also have different measures within the color codes. Then a region is suddenly ‘dark orange’ and you have to find out what the difference is with ‘enhanced orange’ and ‘normal orange’ and what that means in practice in terms of measures. ”

“At the moment my Italian friends in a WhatsApp group are having a heated discussion whether they can have a picnic in a park on Monday on Easter Monday, so I am not the only one who finds it unclear. Some of the Italians have turned away from it, saying: I’ll see what color it is on Friday and then I’ll do whatever my neighbor does. ”

What about the numbers?

“Not so good. The occupation of hospitals is increasing due to the British variant and something has gone wrong with the vaccination program: far too few elderly people have been vaccinated, so they are now becoming ill. Thirty percent of all doses are in people under the age of 50. This is due to pushing forward, but also due to the priority that Italy gives all healthcare workers when vaccinating. This applies not only to health care workers on the front lines, but also to twenty-five-year-olds who are training to become psychiatrists. Doses have also been sent to companies to vaccinate employees, so this is a vaccination scandal in the making. ”

In October, especially in Naples, the atmosphere was grim due to fierce riots. How is that now?

“The regional approach has provided a little more stretch for the Italians. I have now seen all colors except white, where everything is fine, and so I experienced yellow in Rome. Then the catering industry was allowed to open during the day. Then you could have lunch inside, and that was nice. It only took a few weeks until it was orange and everything had to be closed, but because people have had some time to relax, they also accept that things have to be stricter when the number of infections rises. ”

“Don’t forget that many people stayed in here for two months at a time last year and in some regions schools have now been closed for almost a year. Then getting an ice cream is fun. On paper, everything has to be done according to the rules, so when I went to the ice cream shop this afternoon, he wrapped my ice cream neatly in aluminum foil, because then everyone sees that it is take-away ice cream. It doesn’t matter that I immediately removed the foil to eat the ice cream on the street: the ice cream shopkeeper follows the rules, even though they make no sense. ”

“That way everyone finds their way to deal with those measures. There is a pleasant gap between theory and practice and enforcement is not strict. I have been to Naples with code yellow, orange and red and I did not notice any difference. Every time I was allowed to eat my takeaway pizza in the restaurant, whether it was according to the rules or not. ”

Does spring come, also contributes to the good mood of the Italians?

“You can smell spring in the city, in the parks, on the squares where children play. It’s twenty degrees and everyone is outside. Of course a lot of people go to the park, but those groups keep their distance from each other, you don’t see crowds here like in the Vondelpark in Amsterdam, where the police had to intervene. Yes, sometimes young people just take off their mouth caps, and then the police say something about it. ”

How are you going to spend Easter in Rome?

“I am really looking forward to terraces, but they can only open when yellow. When the Easter lockdown is red, I am allowed to go shopping and walk in my neighborhood. Or cycling, because that counts as sport. So I put on my sneakers: wherever I am, they can’t hurt me. That’s why I’m glad Rome is orange after Easter, because then I can walk around freely within the curfew limits, without checking and without being asked what I’m doing. ”

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