The circulation of the SarsCoV2 virus in Italy is increasingly intense, with a rapid increase in cases for the tenth consecutive week. In this worsening situation, other 4 Regions - Lombardy, Piedmont, Lazio and Sicily - will pass in the yellow band from Monday and there is a new record of positives in Italy: 144.243 cases of Covid identified in the last 24 hours, compared to 126.888 of the day before yesterday.
The victims, according to data from the Ministry of Health, are 155, while yesterday they were 156. The 4 Regioni yellow from Monday 'alongside Liguria, Marche, Veneto, Friuli Venezia Giulia, the PA of Trento and Bolzano and Calabria, already in this risk range. Half of Italy therefore passes into the yellow zone while the incidence has more than doubled in a week.
Furthermore, according to the data of the daily bulletin of the ministry of health, there are 1.224.025 molecular and antigenic swabs carried out in the last 24 hours (yesterday 1.150.352) and the positivity rate is 11,78%, stable compared to 11,03% of the previous day. There are 1.260 patients in intensive care, 34 more in 24 hours, and 11.150 hospitalized patients with symptoms in the ordinary wards, 284 more.
A critical trend photographed and confirmed by the weekly monitoring of the Ministry of Health-Iss. The weekly incidence of Covid cases at national level continues to increase rapidly: it has more than doubled reaching 783 cases per 100.000 inhabitants (24/12/2021 - 30/12/2021) against 351 per 100.000 last week, while the mean Rt calculated on symptomatic cases was 1,18, slightly up on the previous week (it was 1,13) and still above the epidemic threshold. There are four regions where the incidence rate of Covid cases is over a thousand per 100 thousand inhabitants compared to the national average: in Umbria the cases are 1485 per one hundred thousand inhabitants, in Lombardy 1442, in Tuscany 1098, in Piedmont 1021. Always increasing also the national rate of employment in intensive care: it is at 12,9% (exceeding the alert threshold set at 10%), while the employment rate in medical areas at national level rises to 17,1 (compared to the threshold of alert set at 15%).
Furthermore, according to the latest data from the National Agency for Regional Health Services (Agenas), 14 regions exceed the alert threshold of 10% of intensive care places occupied by patients with Covid-19: Abruzzo (12 %), Calabria (15%), Emilia Romagna (14%), Friuli Venezia Giulia (15%), Lazio (16%), Liguria (20%), Lombardy (13%), Marche (17%), Pa Bolzano (18%), Pa Trento (23%), Piedmont (16%), Sicily (11%) and Tuscany (13%), Veneto (18%). The occupation of the departments, Agenas notes, rises instead in 10 regions: 17 exceed the threshold of 15%, with Valle d'Aosta and Calabria at 29%.
A situation aggravated by the increasing circulation of the more infectious Omicron variant: according to the latest ISS flash survey, relating to December 20, the Delta variant is still predominant with an estimated prevalence of 79% and Omicron is at 21 % of the sample examined, with a regional variability between 3% and 65%. Omicron, the president of ISS pointed out, Silvio Brusaferro, is “in clear growth, albeit with great differences from region to region”. The next flash survey for the detection of variants on the national territory will be carried out on Monday 3 January.