Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has resisted growing pressure from health experts to impose a second nationwide lockdown, which citizens argue would send many struggling businesses bankrupt.
Instead, Conte has proposed a regional approach that would target the hardest-hit areas.
New measures to come into effect on Thursday include further business closures and restrictions on travel to regions with a high infection rate.
While the new decree has not yet been signed into law, Conte outlined the latest planned restrictions in a speech to the lower house of the Italian parliament on Monday afternoon.
“In light of last Friday’s report [from the Higher Health Institute] and of the particularly critical situation in some regions, we are forced to intervene to mitigate the contagion rate with a strategy that must correspond to the different situations of the regions,” he said.
Conte said “targeted interventions according to the risks in the various regions” would include “a ban on travel to high-risk regions, a national travel limit in the evening, more distance learning, and public transport with a capacity limited to 50 per cent”.
Conte later clarified that there would be a new national three-tier framework setting out the rules for regions.
The country is to be divided into three bands, with differing “scientific and objective” criteria approved by the Higher Health Institute, he said.
The worst-affected regions, which he named as Lombardy, Calabria and Piedmont, would face the toughest restrictions however it’s not clear yet what exactly they will be.
The draft of the new decree also outlines a curfew to start at 10:00 pm and end at 5:00 am, according to Italian news agency ANSA.
Conte also announced the nationwide closure of shopping centres on weekends, a complete closure of museums, and moving all high schools and potentially middle schools to remote learning.
The measures fell well short of what had been expected – and what has been introduced in France, the UK and Spain – despite Italy now recording over 30,000 new cases a day.
Conte has faced severe pressure from all sides of the debate: health experts have insisted a lockdown is necessary, while regional leaders have declared they would resist stricter measures, and business owners have demanded better compensation for the closure of their businesses.
Italy’s latest set of coronavirus rules will come in under the fourth emergency decree announced since October 13.
