Media playback is unsupported on your gadget
Giuseppe Conte states the EU needs to act in a sufficient and co-ordinated way to assist countries worst hit by the infection.
This was his first interview with the UK broadcast media given that the pandemic blew up in Italy seven weeks earlier.
He was speaking as Italy and some other EU nations attempt to push more penny-wise members of the bloc to release so-called “corona bonds” – sharing financial obligation that all EU nations would help to pay off.
Media playback is unsupported on your gadget
The Italian prime minister told the BBC that Europe’s leaders were “facing an appointment with history” that they could not miss.
” If we do not seize the opportunity to put new life into the European task, the threat of failure is real.”
The infection rate in Italy is slowing – the current figures reveal positive cases increasing from the previous day by a little over 1%. Two weeks ago, the rise was 7%.
The death toll too reveals signs of falling, from 919 a fortnight ago to 542 deaths in the past 24 hours. However Giuseppe Conte warned Italy not to reduce its guard and stated that the nationwide lockdown, imposed on 9 March, might just be relieved slowly.
” We need to pick sectors that can restart their activity. If scientists confirm it, we might begin to relax some steps already by the end of this month.”
Image copyright
Getty Images
More than 17,000 individuals have actually passed away in Italy from Covid-19
Mr Conte has actually won kudos for his federal government’s handling of the c