Covid Italia, Brusaferro: “Towards Rt at 1.55 next week”

“There has been a rapid evolution” of the covid epidemic. The contagion index “Rt is growing. It is currently at 1.29 in our country. And when we look at that projected one week ahead, it shows us how the growth is clear and is projected to 1.55. We always talk about ‘Rt symptomatic, that is, not only positive but people who in addition to being positive also have symptoms “. This was explained by the president of the Higher Institute of Health (Iss), Silvio Brusaferro, during the press conference on the analysis of the data of the Covid regional monitoring of the control room. “The Rt index of hospitalized patients is also above the threshold of 1, with a value of 1.16, even if the curve seems quite flat and we are monitoring it to see the evolution, added Brusaferro.” Comparing the last 15. days with the precedents it emerges that in all or almost all regions there is a marked increase “in the incidence of Sars-CoV-2.” This is also confirmed in the last week. And we see that growth is mainly characterized in this phase by new cases in the 10-19 and 20-29 age group, followed by 30-39. So it is the younger population that at this moment feeds the new cases “, he noted.” The average age of those who contract the “Sars-CoV-2 infection” is lowering “. And in fact” the median age at diagnosis it is 25 years, it is decreasing very rapidly. The median age at first admission is also lowering and is 48. The median age of admission to intensive care is then lowered to 59 years. On the other hand, the median age of those who unfortunately dies remains rather stable, even if, being limited numbers, the confidence interval is quite wide “, is the picture traced by the president Iss.” The share of cases imported from abroad also increases. from outside the region “, since it shows that” there are situations of re-entry or movement between regions “. It increases the genotyping and sequencing of Covid samples in Italy.” The positive data is that we are at 9.3% of the sequenced strains ” in June 2021. “And the data we take into account is that the share of the Delta variant” of Sars-CoV-2 “is increasing and the Alpha variant is progressively decreasing”, underlined Brusaferro commenting on a graph which shows that in the last 45 days, for the first time the number of reports of cases caused by the Delta variant in Italy (46%) exceeded those caused by the Alfa variant. “This is an expected figure – highlighted Brusaferro – but today’s data confirms it. Even taking into consideration a shorter period, from 5 June to 19 July “.