Post-lockdown Italy maintains downward trend in active cases, but PM cautions “long road ahead”

Conte also commented that in spite of its initial disregard for Italy’s plight as the first European country stricken by the pandemic, “the European Union has shown it has understood the mistakes of the past.”

“I am confident that both in terms of the economic response and of the battle against COVID-19, Europe will be up to this historic challenge,” Conte said.

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With regards to U.S. President Donald Trump’s blaming of China for the virus, Conte said that “right now we think the priority is to foster international cooperation as much as possible as an essential tool in order to defeat the virus and safeguard global health.”

“Italy believes strongly in the possibility of this cooperation and is ready to make its contribution,” the prime minister said.

“SUDDEN, VERTICAL COLLAPSE” IN AIR TRAVEL

In a report out Tuesday, National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) said that “over the course of just five weeks”, the pandemic has triggered a “sudden and vertical collapse” in the airline industry.

In Italy as of 2017, this industry had a turnover of 9.4 billion euros (10.2 billion U.S. dollars) and employed about 20,000 people, while a total of 193 million passengers transited through Italy’s airports in 2019 ( up by 7.4 million compared to 2018), according to ISTAT.

“While the spread of COVID-19 has halted transportation almost completely, the sector that suffered the strongest impact was air passenger transport,” ISTAT analysts wrote.
“The COVID-19 emergency has brutally interrupted the positive evolution of this sector, plunging it into a dramatic global crisis of unprecedented proportions over a very brief period of time,” ISTAT wrote.

In March this year, 66.3 percent of flights were canceled, and passengers dropped by 85 percent (from about 14 million in March 2019 to just over 2 million in March this year).
ISTAT also reported that the number of passengers arriving and departing from Italy’s airports dropped from just under 460,000 on Feb. 23 to 6,780 on March 29.

Source: Xinhua