“Don’t let us see any more photos like the ones from today; we must all avoid a third wave taking place,” Domenico Arcuri, Italy’s COVID-19 emergency commissioner, said on Sunday evening.
Speaking on Italian TV, he was referring to pictures of city centres across Italy thronged with people earlier that day, as restrictions were eased in several regions and many bars and restaurants reopened for the first time in weeks.
“It would be difficult to start the vaccination campaign [in January] with the curve steepening again,” Arcuri warned, calling the crowds “unacceptable”.
While shopping centres and large outlets have to close on weekends, individual shops and department stores are allowed to remain open – but since they can only admit a limited number of people at once, long queues are apt to form outside and clog busy streets even further.
In Rome, the historic centre became so crowded that police temporarily blocked off the Trevi Fountain.
There were also reports of lines outside restaurants in Milan and Turin on Sunday, after the surrounding regions of Lombardy and Piedmont went from moderate-risk “orange zones” to low-risk “yellow zones” under Italy’s three-tiered lockdown system.
The change means that bars and restaurants can reopen their tables to customers until 6:00 pm, after weeks of serving only take-away.
Basilicata and Calabria also went yellow in Sunday’s update, while Italy’s last remaining high-risk “red zone”, Abruzzo, was downgraded to orange.
The update leaves most of Italy in yellow, with only a handful of orange zones and no red zones.
The government is considering more stringent restrictions over Christmas, following the example of Germany and other European partners.
According to unconfirmed reports in the Italian media, the government may be considering declaring the whole of Italy a red or orange zone over the holidays, with restrictions on travel and business openings.
The government’s scientific committee was due to meet ministers later on Monday.
The new measures, which could be announced as soon as Tuesday, could include an extension of overnight curfews, a ban on all non-essential movements, and the closure of all shops not deemed essential.
Under a decree passed earlier this month, on Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day all movement between cities and towns was banned except for work, health reasons or emergencies.
In addition, the government banned movement between the country’s 20 regions from December 21 to January 6, closed ski resorts during the same period and prohibited the traditional Christmas midnight mass due to a 10:00 pm to 5:00 am nationwide curfew.
Italy reported 491 new coronavirus-related deaths on Monday, up from 484 on Sunday, after surpassing the UK as the country with the highest death toll in Europe.
Italy also recorded 12,030 new infections, down from 17,938 on Sunday, with a lower number of swab tests performed.
The new figures confirm the trend observed over the past few weeks, which shows that the contagion curve is flattening, but at a very slow pace.
