Italy reports more than one million cases of Covid-19

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Rome:

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Italy on Wednesday exceeded the symbolic one million mark, as nearly 43,000 people have died, according to official data.

The country was the first in Europe to be hit by the epidemic earlier this year, triggering an unprecedented national lockdown that has curbed infection rates but devastated the economy.

After a lull over the summer, cases have risen again in recent weeks, in line with much of the continent.

Italy has registered nearly 33,000 new infections in the past 24 hours, reaching 1,028,424 in total, according to figures from the Ministry of Health.

Deaths are also rising rapidly, with another 623 reported, bringing the total to 42,953.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte’s government has instituted an overnight curfew and early closure of bars and restaurants, shutting them down completely and further restricting the movement of residents to areas with the highest infection rates .

But medical experts are pushing Conte to take tougher national action, amid warnings that healthcare services are already starting to falter under pressure.

Massimo Galli, head of the infectious disease department at Milan’s famous Sacco hospital, warned on Monday that the situation was “largely out of control”.

In an interview with the newspaper La Stampa on Wednesday, Conte said he was working “to avoid the closure of the entire national territory”.

“We are constantly monitoring the evolution of contagion, the reactivity and the response capacity of our health system,” he said.

“Above all, we are convinced that we will soon see the effects of the restrictive measures already adopted.”

Italy is the 10th country to cross the million case mark, after the United States, India, Brazil, Russia, France, Spain, Argentina, the United Kingdom and Colombia , according to an AFP count.

(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)