Italian Health Minister Roberto Speranza announced the final confirmation late on Friday after the government reviewed the latest regional statistics in a weekly report produced by the Ministry of Health with the Higher Health Institute.
The report described the current situation as “positive overall” but warned that there are “still signs of transmission” and “new hotspots”, urging strict compliance to Italy’s anti-contagion measures in place, including social distancing.
As well as some international travel, unrestricted movement will be allowed in and out of all regions, including Lombardy, which has registered almost half of the country’s 33,340 coronavirus fatalities.
However, some southern regions with relatively few cases are now considering bringing in their own local restrictions on people arriving from the north.
Regions opposing the lifting of travel restrictions include Sardinia, Sicily, Tuscany and Campania whose president Vincenzo De Luca said a reopening of unrestricted travel including “provinces still heavily affected” by coronavirus is “incomprehensible”.
However the mayor of Lombard capital Milan, Beppe Sala, described the move as the “right decision”, stressing that “now is the time to give oxygen back to work”.
The news was also welcomed by the regional presidents of Veneto, Liguria and Emilia-Romagna in the north, and Calabria in the far south.
Italian daily Il Corriere reported on Saturday that allowing regions to reopen “sends an important signal of economic recovery”.
“The problem of Lombardy remains, the caution of scientists too,” it said.
“But postponing the reopening for a week would have triggered unsustainable tensions and forced the government to keep foreign borders closed.”
Italy registered 355 new coronavirus cases and 75 deaths on Sunday, some of the lowest such numbers since the nation’s lockdown against the pandemic began in early March.
The country now totals 233,019 known cases of the virus and 33,415 deaths.
