” I think the Rt index is a tool that comes too late, on old data, useful for those who do epidemiology, for scholars, less so for timely interventions. Especially at this stage of the epidemic. ” This was stated by Professor Pier Luigi Lopalco, epidemiologist and health councilor in Puglia, in an interview with ‘Il Messaggero’. ” It makes me very happy that a simpler mechanism is finally being used. The one in place has too many quibbles, starting with 14 days of being stuck in a color before being able to change. A much more understandable and linear system was needed and the one proposed seems to me to respond to this need. There is only one thing that does not convince me. Right to give more importance to incidence, but we should change the way we calculate it. Today we simply resort to the data that emerges from all the swabs performed. But in this phase of the epidemic, in which more and more people have been vaccinated and among them there are the categories most at risk, this data could be of little use. Perhaps it would be better to calculate the incidence only on symptomatic cases or even on the number of hospitalizations. In this way we will be able to have a more realistic picture of the situation ”. For Lopalco ” this pandemic wave has passed, it seems clear to me now that we are going in phases. But I am optimistic, I am not among those who expect a fifth, a sixth wave and so on. ” The risk, however, is that ‘there are still many positive people and this could cause a trickle of infections in the tail of the wave. Now that the young people return to go out, to meet, they can bring the virus back to the family, feed new outbreaks and, unfortunately, even hospitalizations and deaths ”.