The Mediterranean country again reached a record value after the around 98,000 registered new corona cases from the previous day. According to State Secretary for Health Pierpaolo Sileri, more than 60 percent of the cases can be traced back to the Omikron variant. In the past 24 hours, 156 people died with the virus.
In the past few days, the number of corona tests carried out has also increased steadily: 1.15 million were counted in the past 24 hours, which is also a record. Eleven percent of those tested were positive, the previous day it was 1.5 percent. Long queues formed in front of the test stations on Thursday. Test kits were running out in some cities.
1,185 corona patients were in intensive care units in Italian hospitals on Thursday, the previous day there were 1,226. There were a total of 779,463 positively reported people nationwide.
Italy’s government agreed on further corona measures against the continued spread of the virus on Wednesday evening. A year ago, the country with around 60 million inhabitants was in a lockdown and only recorded around 16,200 new corona infections. However, the authorities reported 575 deaths with the virus at the time, so significantly more people died with or from SARS-CoV-2.
Source: Nachrichten
