Covid, Ciciliano (Cts): “Emergency is ending”

“The” covid-19 emergency “is ending, the Technical Scientific Committee is ready to step aside”. So to ‘Il Messaggero’ Fabio Ciciliano, doctor and man of the Civil Protection and of the State Police, in the Cts from the first day. Ciciliano does not openly say that the role of the Scientific Technical Committee is approaching its conclusion (“It is not up to me to say”), but that is the meaning. It is no coincidence that one of the latest scientists’ indications on the maximum capacities of discos or sports facilities has not found application in government decisions. “I was exceptional can not go beyond January,” he adds. When will you meet in the next few days? Were there any other questions raised? “I didn’t laugh at any summons for the next few days,” he replies. They do not have the capacities. “That’s right. The CTS expresses a technical opinion, the government’s assessments are comprehensive, the final decision is a political one”, Ciciliano observes. It almost seems like your task is coming to an end. Until a few months ago, the country was waiting for your decisions as a sort of sentence. Today the government moves with greater autonomy. “Personally, I believe that in the coming weeks, which will be the last, also taking into account the continuous improvement of epidemiological indices, the Scientific Technical Committee should have one last important task: to accompany the management of the Sars-CoV-2 epidemic towards normality” Yet the country is still on a high alert in the management of the pandemic. We are also told by the data we see in the United Kingdom, where cases have exceeded 50,000 a day. And it frightens what is happening in some countries of the Eastern European Union, at stake with vaccinations, and now in dramatic difficulty in terms of the number of infections, hospitalizations and deaths. “In Italy we have managed the emergency with a structure that, in fact, dealt with the emergency, but which cannot be infinite – remarks Ciciliano – We must bring this type of decisions back to the original institutional framework of the institutions responsible for ordinary management. terms: we must move from emergency management to ordinary management and, in my opinion, the CTS must precisely play an accompanying role in this very important phase “. You seem to be saying: the emergency cannot last forever. “We take into account another fact that cannot be forgotten. The state of emergency will expire on December 31”, he continues. Can’t there be extensions? “On the basis of the laws in force for a maximum of one more month, given that at that point the maximum duration of 24 months envisaged by the law would be reached”, explains Ciciliano. Does this mean that you at CTS will soon see the end of your job too? “Look, a very important role was played by the Scientific Technical Committee, in a dramatic phase. Others will judge whether we did it well or badly – he warns – it is not up to me to judge the work of an organ that I do But in the darkest moments it was right to rely on the indications of a scientific committee. Now, however, the scenario has changed. towards an ordinary management of the epidemic “. Are you worried about the increase in new positive cases? Yesterday was 40 percent more than the previous Thursday. “I do not see elements of particular concern. Last Friday public offices returned to 85% attendance, many activities have started again. Many more swabs are being carried out, the highest number ever, as a result of the obligation of the Green pass. Thus we find more asymptomatic positives that we would not have intercepted. But the number of hospitalizations does not increase, rather it decreases. By intercepting many positives we make a sort of preventive contact tracing that keeps the epidemic under control. We know that in the winter months respiratory viruses spread more easily. But if we continue to vaccinate, after the winter we will also be able to give up an emergency tool like the Green pass “.