Covid-19

Italy's measures to halt coronavirus contagion do not seem to be working and it should change its strategy by setting up centres to separate people with suspected symptoms from their families, a prominent Italian scientist said on Monday.

Italy, which has suffered the world's highest death toll from coronavirus, has been in nationwide lockdown for about three weeks, but in the last four days, new infections have continued at between 4,000 and 6,000 a day. to test

The highest daily death toll since the outbreak began on February 21 was registered on Friday with 919 fatalities, and the tally was only slightly lower in the following days.

Andrea Crisanti, professor of microbiology at Padua University, said in an interview with Radio Capital that many of these new cases are probably people who are being infected by fellow family members at home.

Crisanti said, instead of telling people with mild symptoms to self-isolate at home, authorities should have set up centres to separate them from their families, as was done in China where the epidemic originated in December.

Crisanti helped coordinate the coronavirus response in Italy's affluent northeastern region of Veneto, where blanket testing was introduced at the start of Italy's outbreak in the second half of February.