White zone, Andreoni: “Mask also required with vaccine”

Another 5 regions and an autonomous province today in the white zone, with lighter rules and fewer restrictions, but “we can continue to maintain containment measures, that is to use a mask, distance, hand washing”. For Massimo Andreoni, director of Infectious Diseases of the Tor Vergata Polyclinic in Rome and scientific director of the Italian Society of Infectious and Tropical Diseases, anti-covid behaviors must not change for the vaccinated. “The precautions – he says in an interview with the Messenger – are essential to prevent the virus from continuing to circulate and a new variant to spread”. Read also “The situation is fairly under control – says Andreoni – and things are going fairly well. But it doesn’t mean that everything is over. The virus continues to circulate, so we need to be careful and be patient until we have a condition under control, when enough people are vaccinated to have herd immunity. At that point, be calmer. We will probably have to wait until the autumn, as we will probably now have a small slowdown in vaccinations for the decisions made by the government after the AstraZeneca issue. Hence, it is conceivable that herd immunity will be achieved, hopefully with the reopening of schools. In this phase – he emphasizes – the masks must be kept, unless you are in an external environment and we are not sufficiently spaced. If not, we must always be careful and continue to take all measures ”. “The vaccination – explains the infectious disease specialist – we did it on too small a number of the population to be able to think that it is sufficient to reduce the circulation of the virus. We recall that 40 million doses administered do not correspond to 40 million vaccinated. We still have to keep the containment measures under current conditions. So, it’s not that you can’t go to a restaurant but you have to stay spaced out. Outdoors, you can go without masks, but only if there is a distance. If the Delta variant circulated in Italy now – he concludes – we would have only 15 million people who have already done the two doses, and would be less at risk. But the remaining 25 million, who made only one, would only be 30 percent protected. Let’s not forget that the diffusion capacity of a variant is very fast. In England, Indian has supplanted English. To avoid this danger we must continue to vaccinate as much as possible, also doing the second administration. And in the meantime we continue to take all containment measures “.