Italy pondering tighter restrictions on travel from Portugal, Spain

  • Lusa
  • 12 July 2021

The president of Italy's National Institute of Health (ISS), Silvio Brusaferro, said that the authorities were "evaluating" stricter measures for travellers from Portugal and Spain.

Italy’s health authorities on Friday said that they were pondering tighter restrictions on travel from Portugal and Spain, after they reported that 1,390 new coronavirus infections and 25 deaths associated with Covid-19 had been recorded in the previous 24 hours.

The president of Italy’s National Institute of Health (ISS), Silvio Brusaferro, said that the authorities were “evaluating” stricter measures for travellers from Portugal and Spain, while stressing that “a quarantine is naturally not envisaged at this time.”

The authorities in Italy are concerned about the worsening pandemic situation in Portugal and Spain, in particular, due to the spread of the Delta variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, but have not clarified what restrictions they might impose on travellers.

On the occasion of Sunday’s European Championship final, in which Italy will face England in a match played in London, Italy’s health authorities have invited people to “follow the game and, with luck, celebrate, but maintaining safety measures and prudence.”

The talk of new travel restrictions comes at a time when new cases in Italy are sharply up on last week; last Friday 794 new infections were recorded, about 600 fewer than this Friday.

The cumulative incidence in Italy is now 11 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, confirmed

“It is a small reversal of trend that tells us that we are no longer managing to bring the pandemic numbers down,” the head of the Ministry of Health’s prevention team and a member of the technical and scientific commission, Giovanni Rezza, said at a news conference on Friday, recalling that cases in Italy had been declining since the end of March.

The Alpha variant first identified in the UK remains the dominant one in Italy, although the Delta strain is expected to overtake it in the coming weeks. It “is progressively increasing in all Italian provinces” and accounted for 27.7% of new cases in June, up from 5.2& in May, Brusaferro explained.

However, the pressure on hospitals continues to ease: of the 41,396 active cases, 1,167 were in hospital on Friday, 30 fewer than on Thursday, and 169 in intensive care units (11 down on the day). The average age of infection in Italy has fallen to 31, due to the effect of the vaccines, while that of patients in hospital with Covid-19 is 52.

As for vaccination, 56,305,683 doses have been administered and 22,695,367 people are fully inoculated, corresponding to 42.02% of the population over age 12.

All regions of Italy are in the so-called “white zone”, with few restrictions; masks are only mandatory in enclosed spaces.

Since the start of the pandemic in the country in February 2020, Italy has had a cumulative 4,268,491 cases and 127,756 deaths.

Worldwide, the pandemic has caused at least 4,013,756 deaths worldwide, resulting from more than 185.5 million cases of infection by the new coronavirus, according to the most recent report by Agence France-Presse.

In Portugal, since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, there have been 17,142 deaths associated with Covid-19 and 902,489 cases of infection have been recorded, according to the Directorate-General of Health.

The respiratory disease is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, detected in late 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China, and currently with variants identified in countries such as the UK, India, South Africa, Brazil and Peru.