AFP :
Italy’s top coronavirus response official Tuesday attributed two successive declines in the daily death rate to a painful national lockdown that appeared to be finally bearing fruit.
But Angelo Borrelli also noted that the real number of infections was probably 10 times higher than the official count.
The civil protection chief also said the nation of 60 million was on course to overtake China’s total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in a week.
“The measures we took two weeks ago are starting to have an effect,” Borrelli said in an interview with the La Repubblica daily.
He said more data over the next few days will help understand “if the growth curve is really flattening.”
The Mediterranean country has seen the number of daily fatalities come down from a world record 793 on Saturday to 651 on Sunday and 601 on Monday.
The number of new officially registered infections fell from 6,557 on Saturday to 4,789 on Monday. Italy’s figures offered a ray of hope in the middle of a global crisis that is becoming increasingly urgent in parts of Europe and the United States.
Scientists believe that countries such as Spain and France are following in Italy’s footsteps with a lag of a few weeks. The numbers from the US are also similar to those of Italy’s from about 20 days ago.
