Sicily avoids the “yellow” in extremis. And it remains in the white band next week with fewer restrictions. Although the official decision will only be made on Friday 20 August from the control room. The island, stormed by tourists in August, recorded the breach of the three thresholds for the change of color: after having abundantly exceeded 50 weekly cases for every 100 thousand inhabitants (we are at 155), Covid positive patients in intensive care, according to Agenas data, occupy 11% of the beds (the limit to stay in the white zone is 10%) and in the ordinary wards they are 17% (limit to 15%).
The system for calculating the number of beds
But the data of the weekly monitoring of the ISS on the one hand refer to the admissions recorded on Tuesday 17 August (77 patients in intensive care instead of the current 83). On the other hand, the number of beds in intensive care communicated to the control room at the beginning of August and which can only be updated on a monthly basis. A non-public number but higher in the case of Sicily (as noted among the first by the researcher Vittorio Nicoletta – @vi__enne) than the variable one communicated and used daily by Agenas (National Agency for Regional Health Services) to calculate each day the employment rates of resuscitators in the Italian regions (the Agenas data is the same instead used in the weekly monitoring to calculate the employment rate in the ordinary wards). Hence a percentage of beds in intensive care in Sicily of a few decimal places below the critical threshold of 10 per cent. With white annex confirmed.
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Yellow only postponed
On the island, however, the infections and hospitalizations are in steady growth. The incidence of infections has risen to 155 per 100 thousand inhabitants (in first place in Italy with Sardinia). On 19 August the new positives were 1,377 (compared to 7,260 in Italy), a fifth of the total. While the deaths (16) were almost a third of those in Italy (55). With this trend, the transition to yellow is only postponed for a week. Meanwhile, a sigh of relief draws him above all restaurateurs and owners of bars and pubs, who were already preparing for the squeeze. Although the color change would not actually have involved major changes. The restaurants remain open without time limits both indoors (with green pass) and outdoors (even without), but in the yellow zone the limit of diners at the table is four people, with an exception for cohabitants.
The fears of restaurateurs
“With the ‘yellow zone’ little changes for us restaurateurs, with the current rules in ‘orange’ instead we should close and this makes no sense considering that in the meantime the green pass has been introduced”, says the president of Fipe of Palermo, the entrepreneur Antonio Cottone, owner of four restaurants in the Sicilian capital. “We need a way out, the solution is the vaccine and if you really need to close it, do it with those activities that do not ask for the green pass”. “Now that there is the green pass, closing would mean giving the message that vaccination is useless – adds Doriana Ribaudo, restaurateur – Whoever has had the double vaccination must have the possibility of being able to live”.
