Italy will announce before the end of this week its plans for the gradual reopening from a lockdown imposed to fight the coronavirus emergency that will be applied starting from May 4, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said on Tuesday.
“WE MUST ACT ON THE BASIS OF REOPENING PLAN”
The lockdown, closing most Italian businesses and preventing people leaving their homes for all but essential needs, has been in place since March 9, putting a major strain on the euro zone’s third largest economy.
“I wish I could say: let’s reopen everything. Immediately. We start tomorrow morning … But such a decision would be irresponsible. It would make the contagion curve go up in an uncontrolled way and would nullify all the efforts we have made so far,” Conte wrote in a Facebook post.
“We must act on the basis of a national (reopening) plan, which however takes into account the territorial peculiarities.”
Conte said the easing of restrictions would happen on the basis of a thorough study and scientific data and not to “satisfy a part of public opinion or to satisfy the requests of some production categories, individual companies or specific regions”.
