“With the yellow, orange and red zone system, 25,000 hospitalizations were avoided in the first month”

With the introduction of the ‘color’ zones – that is, the yellow, orange and red zone -, in Italy 25 thousand hospitalizations were avoided in the first month of their entry into force, last autumn with the anti-Covid Dpcm of November 3, 2020. These measures have in fact made it possible to reduce the transmissibility (Rt) of Sars-Cov-2 by 13-19% in the yellow area, by 27-38% in the orange area and by 36-45% in the red area. A result certified by the international journal ‘Nature Communications’ which publishes the study conducted by the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (Iss), Inail and the Bruno Kessler Foundation. The study showed – reads a joint note – how the yellow area was effective in stabilizing the incidence of cases, bringing the Rt to values ​​around 1, while the orange and red areas produced a substantial reduction in incidence. lowering the RT to values ​​between 0.80 and 0.93 (orange area) and between 0.74 and 0.83 (red area). Taken together, the measures brought the epidemic under control in 85 out of 107 provinces within 3 weeks of their introduction, avoiding a total of approximately 25,000 hospitalizations in the same period, or more than half of the 44,000 carried out. The positive effects on the reduction of hospitalizations, however, are even more significant if observed over longer times, by virtue of the reduction in the incidence of infection obtained with the measures “. public mobility, elaborated with mathematical models to quantify the association between the measures and the change in R