Today like early May: a thousand cases then, a thousand today. Still almost all confined to the house three months ago, free to let loose now, in a mid-August that smells of liberating frenzy. But can the two situations really be compared? On the one hand, yes: a thousand positive people are a thousand contagious people. Isolation and quarantine today prove to be watering everywhere. The virus is also on vacation and travels freely from one holiday resort to another, in Italy and Europe, by car, ferry and plane.
Coronavirus, today’s bulletin 22 August: 1071 new positives, 3 victims and 5 fewer people in intensive care
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However, the differences are great. Today compared to then we are on the other side of the curve. In May we were descending from a peak that had terrified us, with 31,000 deaths in just over two months. The weight of 76 thousand people who were positive at that time translated into 855 people in intensive care and 262 victims in the 24 hours of May 13 alone. The average age of the infected was 64 years. The tampons – 71,000 then as now – were reserved for those who already breathed very badly. And certainly not at all: the national serological survey has calculated that one in 6 infected has not been detected by tests. Lethality, also thanks to the insufficient number of diagnoses, was 13% in Italy: ten percentage points more than the data coming from China.
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Today, however, with the data we are going back: total infected, hospitalized and, albeit slowly, people in intensive care. What’s worse, we have the feeling that we have squandered the accumulated advantage over the virus during confinement. We had dropped below 200 daily infections before August. The tracing services managed to extinguish even complicated outbreaks in a few days, such as that of the San Raffaele nursing home in Rome or of return flights from Bangladesh. Infections from nightlife or from holiday resorts have unraveled the canvas created with so much effort. Returns from August 15th will pour again positive tests for weeks, given the maturation times of the infections and the backlogs of the tests to be disposed of. The holiday outbreaks will hardly be extinguished before schools reopen and we will shake off the idea that by dint of dancing we have put education at risk.
Coronavirus, chaos returns. From the mobility block to the school, the regions are divided
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We are sure of some important advantages. The basin of the infected is younger today: 34 years the average of new positives. Two out of three cases are not discovered because they are breathless, but thanks to screening campaigns: they are positive in a serological test, they are tested before entering the hospital, they swab because they return from countries at risk. The situation in hospitals remains good, positive people are about 17 thousand (even though we had dropped to 12 thousand), many wards opened in a hurry for Covid today are empty, intensive care has been hosting 69 patients with coronavirus and for weeks we have almost always been under to ten victims a day. Someone has come to speculate that the virus has gotten better. A mutation, in Sars-Cov-2, was actually found: it’s called D614G, making it probably more contagious but less virulent. However, it has been present in Italy since February and can hardly justify such a different scenario from a clinical point of view. And on the drug front, we haven’t made any major progress.
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What about the future? Italy in shock in May is offset by the almost carefree one of today. In hospitals and local health authorities we have more respirators and more tampons available (today we can do up to 90 thousand a day). The virus would never be allowed to circulate undisturbed for two months, as it had before February 21. But the bad habit of the Regions of marching each with its own rules, of the government of sending rapid tests to Rome yes but not to Milan, of the governors to prefer squabbles to collaboration, remains intact. And if having young and healthy infected people is good news for us, it is also good news for the virus. Dwelling in human beings in good shape, eager to walk around and mingle with others, subjected to zero controls, is what he wants most. And we are pleasing him.
