Italy may reach epidemic peak soon, officials say
Italy authorities announced a daily toll of 812 deaths in 24 hours, bringing the total to 11,500 deaths.
But after nearly three weeks of a lock down, there were some encouraging signs that the measures could be working.
The increase in new positive cases has never been lower, with an increase of 4%, half as much as four days ago (8.3%) and four times less than two weeks ago .
For the first time since the start of the pandemic in Italy, the number of people currently positive in Lombardy, the region most affected, has decreased (25,006 against 25,392 Sunday).
Furthermore, the number of people considered healed across the country (1,590) has never been so high in a daily report.
“We can hope to reach the peak in seven or 10 days, then, reasonably, a decline in contagion,” Deputy Health Minister Pierpaolo Sileri said on Monday.
Officials said they could be witnessing a flattening of the curve but called for people to continue to respect the measures of the lockdown.
Europe counts more cases
Spain overtook China, recording more than 85,000 cases on Monday. It is the second worst hit country after Italy.
France announced that it had more than 3,000 deaths and more than 44,000 cases in the country. But the director of health Jérome Salômon said they expected the quarantine measures to begin having an effect soon.
There are at least 21,000 people in France hospitalised for COVID-19. He said 64 people younger than 30 were currently hospitalised in intensive care units.
Could be too early to tell if Italy and Spain have reached the peak
Spain, Italy and the UK have much more “extensive” problems, making it difficult to know if the peak has been reached yet, experts at the World Health Organization said while responding to journalists.
Dr Mike Ryan who leads the WHO’s health emergencies programme said that that the peak went up and down in Wuhan before it was clear if it was reached.
But he said the cases today are really those that were contracted two weeks ago.
But he said that it’s important not just to get past the peak but to test and search for cases and isolate them in order to aggressively bring down the epidemic.
“The question is how do you go down, and going down isn’t just about a lockdown and let go. To get down from the numbers, not just stabilise, requires a redoubling of public health efforts to push down,” said Dr Ryan, who said he hoped Italy and Spain were nearly there.
He said they advised that all suspect cases are tested and isolated in a medical facility. They also said that contacts should be separated ideally not at home.
Dr Ryan said in Singapore health workers checked on people every day who had been in contact with cases to check on their health.
Most of the transmission is now happening in the home, Dr Ryan said, explaining that ideally, contacts needed to be traced so sick people could be removed from the home.
