The coronavirus epidemic will stop thanks to quarantine measures in the most affected areas, not thanks to a vaccine that will probably be ready too late, Professor Massimo Galli, whose team isolated a Italian variant.
“We all hope that a vaccine is close at hand,” said in an interview with AFP-TV, the head of the university department of infectious diseases at Sacco hospital in Milan (north of Italy), while being skeptical.
For the professor, the most likely is that “this epidemic will stop, not thanks to a vaccine, which will never arrive soon enough to stop it, but thanks to the containment measures that we will manage to take, the measures of limiting virus circulation “.
A strict quarantine was decided 10 days ago for 11 cities in northern Italy where all public places (churches, bars, libraries, schools, museums, town halls) are closed. Sanctions are provided for those seeking to leave these areas.
Limit delivery
In addition, schools, museums and churches have also closed in the three largest regions of the North: Lombardy (Milan), Veneto (Venice) and Emilia-Romagna (Bologna) where several shows and fairs have been reported.
Professor Galli recognized that it is a “bitter pill to swallow” for the populations concerned, but it is “an obligatory choice” because “it was important to seek to limit a later spread of the infection “.
“Everything that has been done should be done,” said Professor Galli, although it is not yet known “whether the measures taken have produced effects or are in the process of producing them.”
According to the professor, “it will take days, maybe weeks to understand it”.
However, he explained that “the apparent increase in the number of cases” observed in recent days is explained by the detection of infected people some time ago.
Italy is the first country in Europe by the number of contagions, which have exceeded 2,500 cases, and registers the heaviest toll to date with 79 deaths, mostly elderly or suffering from other serious pathologies.
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