Italy is weighing new coronavirus restrictions amid another spike in infections surpassing 20,000 new cases per day, according to Italian Health Minister Roberto Speranza.
"I expect the impact of the variants to make the curve grow even further," Speranza told Italy's Il Giornale.
If the daily new cases get up to 40,000, Italy will enact weekend lockdowns to help flatten the curve, according to the report.
Also, areas under 10 p.m. curfews will move it up to 7 p.m. and shopping centers would be shuttered to limit unnecessary interactions.
"The fact remains, however, that you will have to grit your teeth for one or two months, during which you need to adopt new restrictions," University of Milan virologist Fabrizio Pregliasco told Il Giornale.
"A hard lockdown would perhaps be faster but difficult to accept," he admitted.
Italy become the sixth country in the world to go over 100,000 COVID-19 deaths this week, joining the U.S.. Brazil, Mexico, India, and the U.K.
Prime Minister Mario Draghi pledged strong action to turn around Italy's slow vaccination campaign, saying an exit path out of the coronavirus pandemic is not far away if the country can move faster on inoculations.
The newly appointed prime minister told a Rome conference that his priorities include fueling a recovery for Italy's economy, which contracted 8.9% last year.
"The pandemic is not yet defeated but we can glimpse, with the acceleration of the vaccine plan, an exit path which is not distant," Draghi said.
The prime minister added he is committed to "safeguarding health, supporting those in difficulty, favoring economic recovery and accelerating reforms."
Daily infections are on the rise in Italy, reaching a three-month high last week and pushing total cases above 3 million.
Speranza told Rai state television on Sunday that the government is targeting inoculations by summer for all Italians who want them.
A total of 5.4 million vaccine doses have been administered in Italy, with only 2.7% of the population fully vaccinated so far.
Information from Bloomberg was used in this report.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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