Italy’s Ministry of Civil Protection reported on the 24th 16,424 new confirmed cases, including 318 deaths.
As of 6 PM Tuesday, 2,848,564 cases have been confirmed, 96,666 have died and 2,362,465 have been cured.
According to the latest data released by Milan’s public health department, a total of 547 people were infected with novel coronavirus in Milan schools during the week of February 15, 21, including 409 students, 138 teachers and other staff members.
As a result, 5,902 students, 204 teachers and school staff, for a total of 6,106 people, were quarantined.
Italy’s Higher Health Agency said 17.5 percent of the new confirmed cases were minors, a far cry from the 2 percent of the total at the start of the outbreak.
That means a fifth of the infections occurred in schools because the mutated virus found in the UK is more contagious.
Italy’s National Commission for Science, Technology and Science has advised Prime Minister Mario Draghi to be cautious about reopening the country and warned that more than 30 percent of the newly infected people were infected with a variant of the virus found in the UK.
By mid-March, the mutated virus will be the most common source of infection in Italy.
“The study confirms that the mutated virus found in the UK is more likely to spread among minors, which will require us to rethink the use of distance learning in high schools,” said Koda, head of infectious diseases at Roma Gemele University Hospital.
On the afternoon of 24th local time, Italian Health Minister Giorgio Speranza said in a report on the epidemic in the Senate and House of Representatives that Italy does not yet constitute the conditions for the relaxation of control.
Speranza said the mutated virus found in Britain was spreading widely and Italy needed to raise its alert level.
Two other variants, found in Brazil and South Africa, make the vaccine less effective and are therefore more dangerous than those found in Britain.
At present, the spread of these two variants of the virus is still weak, it is necessary to quarantine the epidemic areas.