Across Europe, politicians and public health officials have begun to signal that the coronavirus epidemic there may soon reach its peak — suggesting that the dramatic lockdowns limiting travel, business activity and social life might be starting to halt the spread of the virus. Yet, the restrictions placed on daily life will likely need to remain in place for weeks or months to come in order to keep the virus in check, officials said.
“The lockdown is starting to work,” Pierpaolo Sileri, Italy’s deputy health minister, told BBC on Sunday. “I believe that in one week’s time, 10 days maximum, we will see a drop in positive cases.”
On Sunday, the death rate in Italy slowed for the second straight day, and the number of new confirmed coronavirus cases rose by 5.6% to 3,815 — the lowest increase of the outbreak in the country so far.
Franco Locatelli, the head of Italy’s supreme health council, agreed that the restrictions were helping to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
“We would not have been able to record these numbers if we had not put in place such stringent measures,” Locatelli told HuffPost Italy.
Even so, he said, the restrictions would need to be maintained for some time.
“Speaking of reopening now seems frankly premature,” Locatelli said. “If we opened now, we would nullify all the sacrifices made. The political decision-makers will have to evaluate the choices to be made, but in a few weeks. I repeat — and I have no hesitation in underlining it — it is now premature. Let’s consolidate the data we’re recording right now.”
The question of when normal life might resume has been a key question, both in Europe and in the United States, where President Donald Trump had initially said he wanted American businesses “opened up and just raring to go by Easter.”
On Sunday, however, Trump said the country’s social distancing guidelines would be extended through the end of April and possibly to June, as public health officials warned that as many as 200,000 Americans could die from COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus.
Enrico Bucci, a professor of biology at Temple University in Philadelphia who has been studying the spread of the coronavirus in Italy, said it’s “imp