With the wave of the Omicron variant underway, there are over one million new covid infections in Italy in just 7 days. The World Health Organization yesterday released the record – on the day the bulletin marked another 196,224 cases and 313 deaths – in its latest weekly update on the global pandemic situation. The peninsula is the fourth country for weekly infections in the report with 1.01 million infections, an increase of 57% (just above the global average of + 55%) compared to the previous week. Above Italy, only the United States, France and the United Kingdom. Behind, in fifth place, India. And while the data are frightening, there are those who launch the proposal: enough daily bulletin. To do so is the Undersecretary of Health Andrea Costa, yesterday guest of time.news Live, talking about the daily report on coronavirus infections. A proposal that during the day caused discussion, sparking different reactions between scientists and experts.
“It is appropriate to arrive at a bulletin also with an in-depth analysis of the data”, explained Costa, underlining how one should “clearly state how many positives are vaccinated, how many are not vaccinated and how many doses they have received”. “Thus – he explained – transparency is carried out, I think there are the conditions to arrive at two Covid bulletins a week”.
“In this still expansive phase of the epidemic, eliminating the daily bulletin would be a signal for everyone to be free while daily communication has the effect of reminding us of the situation we are in”, comments the virologist to time.news Salute. Fabrizio Pregliasco, professor of the University of Milan. Enough with the contagion bulletin every day? “When one goes on the highway, he looks at the odometer to see how fast he goes … here we have a dashboard of the pandemic, one of the indicators is the number of cases, the incidence, the Rt, the number of people who go to the hospitals, “he says then Andrea Crisanti, professor of microbiology at the University of Padua, at Non è arenena on La7. “It’s wrong not to check the data,” he insists. Giorgio Palù, president of Aifa, guest of ‘Porta a Porta, on the other hand, says he is “in favor of a weekly or more institutional and perhaps even more diluted communication” of the data on the Covid emergency. “It is like breaking the thermometer when we have a fever. The daily contagion monitoring is a guide “for Lucia Bisceglia, president of the Italian Association of Epidemiology AIE.
Meanwhile, while in Italy we are discussing data and daily bulletins, the WHO launches a new warning on the Omicron variant. The new mutation of the covid in fact causes “a less serious disease than Delta, but it remains a dangerous virus in particular for those who are not vaccinated”. This was remembered by WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at a press conference in Geneva. For Ghebreyesus, “learning to live with this virus does not mean that we can, or must, accept nearly 50,000 deaths a week,” he added speaking to the press following the estimate made public by WHO Europe: over 50% of the population of The European region “will be infected” by the new variant “in the next 6-8 weeks”.