Summer is winding down, the first returns to big cities with commercial and work activities resuming full speed and even the Covid numbers are being affected. Yesterday the weekly Covid bulletin of the Ministry of Health reported 11,606 cases from 17 to 23 August, almost double the previous week, with an increase in swabs performed from 91,402 to 126,215. What should we expect in September? “We will have a small increase in infections but nothing to worry about”. So at Adnkronos Salute Massimo Ciccozzi, head of the Medical Statistics and Epidemiology Unit of the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery of the Campus Bio-Medico in Rome, commenting on the Covid data. “It is clear if the tampons increase, which have been very low to date, we discover a physiological situation of an epidemiological curve, stable and which does not record peaks but the constant presence of the virus”. Your advice for September? “Common sense – Ciccozzi replies – if I go to visit a frail or elderly person, I wear a mask” and in case you are in closed and crowded places? “I wear a mask, I don’t see any problem in doing so. It’s a suggestion, no obligation.”
Second Matthew Bassetti, Director of Infectious Diseases of the San Martino Polyclinic in Genoa, today “we must protect against Covid, which exists, affects and will affect in the future, the most fragile part of Italians with the monovalent vaccine against XBB. This segment of the population must be the priority together with the elders. it is now a virus like many others that is of little interest from a clinical and hospital point of view, in fact there are few serious cases and hospitalizations. Therefore, it is clear that there will also be infections in September but the priority must be to dedicate ourselves to the most fragile and the elderly”.
“There is the risk of the virus circulating at the moment of minimum alert, when everyone has now put aside any type of protection, caution and prudence measure. So, even assuming that BA.2.86 and other possible subvariants of Omicron find us in a much safer condition and, therefore, not at all comparable to the sadly known one of the years between 2020 and 2021, I feel observes Mauro Minelliclinical immunologist of the Personalized Medicine Foundation, – to renew the invitation to a minimum of prudential attention especially to those who know they are subject to risk, recovering the good anti-Covid practices which, although no longer mandatory, are still advisable. It does not seem to me at all inconvenient or penalizing to use, by elderly, oncological or immunocompromised subjects rather than with immunosuppressive therapy in progress, to reuse the masks, avoid close contact and equip themselves with pocket cleaners and disinfectants, at least in situations of excessive crowding or in places indoors“.
The Director of Prevention of the Ministry of Health, Francesco Vaia, in a post on Facebook makes the point. “No alarm! As always, great attention and never underestimate anything but, I repeat, no alarm. During the week we will change the monitoring indicators to adapt them more to the observation of the real effects of the infection with respect to the severity of the disease and the impact on hospitals”.
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