Italy has been one of the world’s hardest hit countries in the COVID-19 pandemic, with almost a quarter of a million confirmed cases and over 33,600 deaths, in a population of only 60 million. But since late March, Italy has seen a steady decrease in new infections, with only 200 new positive tests on June 1, down from almost 4,800 on April 1.
With its curve well and truly flattened by tight lockdown restrictions and a strict travel ban, Italy is finally beginning to loosen restrictions and look at allowing travel again. On June 3, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte announced that the country was beginning its final stage of relaxing restrictions.
“We deserve to smile, to be cheerful, after weeks of great sacrifice,” he said in a press conference.
The relaxed restrictions mean that Italians are now once again able to move about the country. Tourist locations like the Tower of Pisa and the Colosseum in Rome have reopened, and not only to Italians. Italy has opened its borders to other EU countries, although many of their neighbors have not reciprocated. Italy was hit first and hardest of continental European countries, and a certain amount of anxiety about a second wave is warranted.
Conte urged caution along with his words of hope and encouragement, pressing his citizens to keep up with the practices of wearing masks in public and keeping one’s distance. “Abandoning these precautions,” he said, “is seriously thoughtless.”
Italy’s President Sergio Mattarella encouraged that caution. “The crisis is not over and institutions and citizens alike will still have to face its consequences and trauma,” he said on Tuesday, the night before Conte’s announcement.
Other European countries are also beginning to cautiously reopen. Norway and Denmark are allowing free travel between the two Scandinavian countries – but deliberately excluding Sweden, which never imposed a lockdown and suffered a very high mortality rate. Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia have also established a small “travel bubble” among themselves. The UK and Spain are allowing incoming tourism, but only with voluntary quarantine periods, and Switzerland and Austria have both opened to most other European countries, but not Italy.
Photo: A gondola near the Rialto Bridge in Venice. Credit: Shutterstock