{"id":97322,"date":"2020-10-25T21:14:17","date_gmt":"2020-10-25T18:14:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/dinner-off-as-italy-closes-restaurants-early-in-virus-crackdown\/"},"modified":"2020-10-25T21:14:17","modified_gmt":"2020-10-25T18:14:17","slug":"dinner-off-as-italy-closes-restaurants-early-in-virus-crackdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/dinner-off-as-italy-closes-restaurants-early-in-virus-crackdown\/","title":{"rendered":"#Dinner off as Italy closes restaurants early in virus crackdown"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Dinner off as Italy closes restaurants early in virus crackdown<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n Italy’s Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte tightened nationwide coronavirus restrictions Sunday after the country registered a record number of new cases, despite opposition from regional heads and street protests.\n <\/p>\n

Cinemas, theatres, gyms and swimming pools must all close under the new rules, which come into force on Monday and run until November 24. Restaurants and bars will stop serving at 6:00 pm (1700 GMT), Conte’s office said.<\/p>\n

Italy, which was the first European country to be hit hard by the pandemic and impose a nationwide lockdown, on Sunday registered 21,273 new cases.<\/p>\n

“The aim is clear: to keep the contagion curve under control, because that is the only way can we manage the pandemic without being overwhelmed by it,” Conte told a press conference.<\/p>\n

It was imperative Italy act now to avoid a second full lockdown, which “the country can no longer afford”, he said.<\/p>\n

Schools and nurseries<\/a> will remain open, although up to 75 percent of classes for high schools and universities will move online. People have been urged to avoid using public transport or travel<\/a>ling beyond their own communities.<\/p>\n

“This is going to destroy us,” Augusto D’Alfonsi, who owns the Torricella family-run fish restaurant in Rome, told AFP.<\/p>\n

“We’ve already lost 50 percent of our customers this year. Without government aid, we’re done for.”<\/p>\n

‘Tiredness, anger, frustration’<\/b><\/p>\n

The new measures were introduced just hours after dozens of far-right protesters in Rome clashed with riot police during a demonstration against the region’s curfew, setting off fireworks, burning bins and throwing projectiles.<\/p>\n

Some 200 masked militants belonging to the neo-fascist group Forza Nuova lead the skirmish in a second night of street protests, after hundreds of demonstrators clashed with officers in Naples further south over the curfew there.<\/p>\n

Several regions have imposed overnight curfews in a bid to slow-rising COVID-19 infection numbers. Piedmont in the north and Sicily in the south will follow this week.<\/p>\n

Regional leaders had warned that closing businesses would exacerbate social<\/a> tensions as the country struggles to emerge from its worst post-war recession, sparked by the two-month shutdown earlier this year.
\n <\/p>\n

Giuseppe Spadafora, deputy president of business lobby Unimpresa, said the “anger could explode in the coming days and weeks, becoming difficult to control”.<\/p>\n

Conte, however, has been under intense pressure from scientists to do more to curb contagion.<\/p>\n

“It is a complex moment, there’s a lot of tiredness in the country,” he acknowledged Sunday.<\/p>\n

“The pandemic is severely challenging us, it provokes anger, frustration. It’s also creating new inequalities, on top of the existing ones,” he said.<\/p>\n

‘Psychological terrorism’<\/b><\/p>\n

Cosimo Romano, a 23-year old real estate agent in Milan, said closing “non-essential” services was “better than a new two-month lockdown”.<\/p>\n

But Vanessa Musai, 48, a bartender in Savona, northwest Italy, told AFP she was “ashamed to be Italian”, accusing the government of “psychological terrorism”.<\/p>\n

Conte said he too “would feel angry over government measures” as an ordinary citizen, though “I would wait to see the economic support, which will be substantial”.<\/p>\n

He also warned against “giving room to those who specialise in protests and social disorder”, after the far-right demonstration in Rome and reports the Naples protest was orchestrated by organised crime.<\/p>\n

The World Health Organization’s Italian government adviser Walter Ricciardi told the Messaggero daily the country was “paying the consequences” of regional governments failing to prepare for a second wave.<\/p>\n

“We only have a few weeks to intervene. We need local, even regional lockdowns. The curfew does not work”.<\/p>\n

Italy has now registered over 525,000 cases and more than 37,000 deaths, according to health ministry figures.<\/p>\n

Over 100 scientists urged the government to act this week after physicist Giorgio Parisi said that without new measures there would be 500 COVID deaths a day in Italy by November, given the speed of the virus’ spread.<\/p>\n

“In March we were about to be hit by a lorry going 130 kilometres an hour. Today it’s travelling towards us at 60 kilometres an hour,” he told the Repubblica news<\/a>paper on Saturday.<\/p>\n

“We have time to dodge it but if we don’t, even if it’s travelling more slowly, it will kill us all the same”.\n <\/p>\n\n

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Follow the latest news on the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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\n \u00a9 2020 AFP<\/p>\n

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Citation<\/strong>:
\n Dinner off as Italy closes restaurants early in virus crackdown (2020, October 25)
\n retrieved 25 October 2020
\n from https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/news\/2020-10-dinner-italy-restaurants-early-virus.html<\/p>\n

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