It was time ! With less than a week before Christmas Eve, the Italians have finally been fixed on their fate for this chaotic end of the year 2020. After ten days of tug-of-war with the governors of the regions and sharp tensions within the majority, the Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte, was able to unveil Friday, late in the evening, the new round of restrictions imposed on the country from December 24 to January 6.
A decree-law as a “point of balance between the hardening to put in place and the necessary exceptions, given the social importance of these holidays for our national community”, he explained on television last night. But, as usual, Rome did not keep it simple. It is up to Italian citizens to get by in a mishmash of new rules which sometimes provide for the placing of the country under a bell, sometimes for the relaxation of confinement. Broadly speaking, the decree-law thus provides for the passage of the entire peninsula into the “red zone” at Christmas time (from December 24 to 27), from New Year’s Eve (December 31 to January 3) and finally at Christmas time. epiphany hour.
The showered hopes of restaurant bosses
In total, ten days of maximum restrictions with the closure of all “non-essential” businesses and travel ban, except for compelling reasons. A little breath granted to Italians: the possibility of welcoming two people from outside the home while respecting the curfew hours (from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m.). “It is a measure that we have thought of to allow this minimum of sociability which is appropriate for this period”, underlines Prime Minister Conte.
During the other days of this winter break under padlock, the Peninsula will return to the “orange zone”, thus offering the possibility for stores to reopen their doors until 9 p.m. and for Italians to be able to move within the limits of their municipality of residence. , and within a radius of 30 kilometers for cities of less than 5,000 inhabitants.
The announcements, already evoked in the press for days, come to shower the last hopes of the owners of bars and restaurants of the country, who still counted on the holiday period to keep the shop running and limit the financial breakdown. But, from December 24 to January 6, their businesses must remain closed (even if take-out and deliveries remain authorized). Professionals in the sector estimate the loss at 3 billion euros. But “whoever suffers economic damage must be immediately supported”, promised the head of government, announcing an aid package of 645 million euros.
Mass exodus
Among regional governors, the announcement of this decree-law divides. If, in Veneto, one had been calling for days with insistence for new measures of restrictions, in the Lombardy of Attilio Fontana one hoped for a little less “rigidity”. “We take note and we certainly do not oppose it”, accepts all the same, willy-nilly, the elected representative of the League. Anger, on the other hand, on the side of the boss of the region of Genoa, Giovanni Toti. “I do not see why to impose a red zone on Liguria for Christmas, while the Ligurians have committed themselves in recent weeks and have made sacrifices to lower the contagion curve”, explained the center-right president in recent days.
Supporter of a moderate line with the approach of the end of year celebrations, the President of the Council, Giuseppe Conte, finally rallied in part to the “rigorous” wing of his government team, embodied in particular by the minister of Health Roberto Speranza. For the elected official, the next two weeks represent “the most complicated period where the level of interactions and movements increases a lot”. Indeed, the transalpine press already fears a mass exodus for this weekend before the closure of the borders between regions on December 21 with nearly a million people on the roads, in trains and planes across the territory. Minister Speranza reminded him once again: “If we do not want to rush into the third wave, we must accept even stricter containment measures. ”
While the new cases of Covid-19 in Italy have been on the decline for nearly a month (the country recorded nearly 18,000 yesterday), experts are worried to see the national contamination index rise slightly in recent days . Another alarming factor: the number of deaths in the territory. With an average of almost 650 deaths per day last week, the Peninsula now has the largest number of victims of the coronavirus on the European continent.
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