Good afternoon on Wednesday 31st March as another month draws to a close. The pandemic is still with us but as we enjoy some warmer temperatures around the country, there are growing signs that the so-called third wave of the virus is shrinking. 

Yesterday in Italy there were 16,017 new cases of Covid-19 announced. That's a drop of 2,727 from the previous Monday and whilst we've been accustomed to these relative decreases of late, yesterday's was a bit more significant. 

Some important pieces of information around the Italian vaccine rollout have been emerging in the last 24 hours. The Emergency Commissioner General Francesco Paolo Figliuolo has announced that 80% of Italians will be vaccinated by the end of September. This is a little less optimistic than the previous claim that every adult in the country would be vaccinated by June. Figliuolo also pointed out that the supply of vaccines in March came to around 7.5 million doses, compared to the overall figure of 14 million for the entire first quarter. He went on to say that during April the supply would rise to 8 million. Some basic maths will confirm that this is some way short of the proposed 500,000 jabs per day suggested by Prime Minister Mario Draghi last week. 

The Italian government are putting the finishing touches to the new set of measures to combat the pandemic that will come into effect when the current rules end after Easter. It's expected that there will be a continuation of the colour-coded system of zones with the only modification being the removal of the yellow zone which is currently the third least severe of the four. 

Something that will catch more people's attention however is the suggestion that health workers who refuse to be vaccinated against the virus, can be suspended from their jobs without pay. This is a bold move that most people who have been vaccinated would agree with, but is bound to upset the minority who are against the vaccines. 

Doing the almost unthinkable and knocking the pandemic off the very top section of the Italian headlines today is a story with enormous implications for international politics. In a tale that you might expect from a Hollywood movie, two Russian nationals have been expelled from Italy after colluding with an Italian naval officer who was handing them classified military information. The UK has already taken sides in the matter, declaring its support for Italy. 

Onto the weather and it's another glorious day in Italy with sunshine just about everywhere. The temperatures continue to rise with Florence reaching as high as 27° Celsius today. There are also some impressive temperatures expected in the northern cities of Milan, Brescia, Bologna and Verona, all hovering around the 23/24° C mark. 

This morning I put together an article showcasing the best Gardens of Italy. I'll leave you with a few images as a taster of that and you can find the full article on the website. 

Enjoy the rest of your day!

Good morning everyone on Tuesday 30th March. It's a beautiful spring day in Italy with the country bathed in sunshine and temperatures on the up.

Thankfully heading in the opposite direction, albeit only slightly, are the latest Coronavirus figures. Yesterday in Italy there were 12,916 new cases of Covid-19, a reduction of about 900 compared to the previous Monday. We've been seeing these comparative decreases consistently for around 10 days now and this latest one is quite encouraging as the previous few days had shown a slightly concerning levelling-off. 

If we put everything we know together and try to predict what will happen next, it should follow that those numbers of new cases decline at a gradually-increasing rate with the warmer weather and more people being vaccinated every day. The number of daily vaccinations at the moment is around the 250,000 mark but promised to double soon. In total so far, there have been just under ten million vaccinations carried out in Italy with around three million people having received both jabs. 

One hugely important and significant vaccinee this morning was Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi who was given the AstraZeneca jab. This should go some way towards repairing the unnecessary damage done to the reputation of the vaccine after its recent suspension in various EU countries. 

As I alluded to at the top of the page, the weather really has started to improve after last week's unseasonal cold-snap. Every part of the country is covered by a sunshine icon on the weather maps today with Florence reaching as high as 25° Celsius. Could this uptick in temperatures be the nuclear weapon that drives those virus figures down? It just might you know. Let's see how it pans out. 

I'll leave you for the day with some photos of the beautiful island of Pantelleria. It belongs to Sicily and is one of the most remote islands in Italy. The highlight of Pantelleria is the beautiful Specchio di Venere, the Mirror of Venus. 

​Buona giornata

Good morning everyone on Monday 29th March. It's a new week and as we approach Easter, that sense of having left winter behind is reinforced by the clocks going forward. The extra hour of light in the evenings is very welcome and gives us all a reason for an extra spring in our step. 

At the moment though, every step forward is countered by the pandemic. Yesterday in Italy there were 19,611 new Covid-19 cases reported; a slight decrease on the figure reported the previous Sunday. Over the course of the last seven days, there has been a reduction in new cases of around 5% but it must be said, the rate of reduction has slowed in the last two or three days.

You can make yourself dizzy by looking at all the stats; for example the positivity rate (number of positive cases compared to number of tests) yesterday went up a little while the R number (rate of transmission) has dropped a bit. The bottom line is we're still a long way from getting out of this situation and the virus is holding firm against the many weapons currently ranged at it. 

Three more regions are now in red zone as of today with Calabria, Tuscany and Valle d'Aosta all now under the most severe set of restrictions. One tiny positive is that Lazio will turn from red to orange from tomorrow. During Easter, the whole country will be under the red zone restrictions and then we return to the colour codes from the 7th to 30th April. 

A political row has erupted over a surprising rule that means Italians are allowed to go on holiday and indeed, are allowed to travel between Italian regions if their purpose is to reach the airport. Currently, travel between regions is only for health, emergency or work reasons so this one has caused a few raised eyebrows. We'll watch developments on that story with interest but it should be underlined that this very much refers to Italians going abroad, rather than visitors entering Italy from abroad. 

There's still very little in terms of a roadmap for when holidays in Italy might be possible for foreign tourists but with the pandemic showing few signs of coming to an end, all we can do is wait for the situation to improve. 

The ace up our sleeve has always been the weather and whilst it's been unseasonably cold of late, things are starting to take a more positive turn with some higher temperatures this week. Some parts of Tuscany and Umbria will reach 20° Celsius later today and the warmer air should start to circulate around the northern regions as the week evolves. It's only going to get warmer from now on so we continue to hope for a similar effect on the pandemic as the weather caused last year. 

In order to keep the blogs a little shorter and to the point, I'm going to include a link to the relevant page on the website for the featured place of the day so at the bottom of the Facebook post today you'll find a link for the full description of the Cinque Terre in Liguria, along with some photos attached to the post. 

I'll end the day with a lovely little story that's just come to my attention. Over the weekend a family was travelling from Lecce in Puglia, by train to the northern city of Turin. Along with their luggage they had their pet cat Grisù who at a certain point, decided he'd like to go and explore the rest of the train. When the train reached Pescara, the ticket inspector saw the cat and assumed he'd just boarded the train by mistake and thus ejected him from it; one would hope there was at least a polite enquiry at this stage as to whether or not the cat had a ticket.

The frantic family were beside themselves with worry about what had happened to their errant moggy and upon establishing what had happened with the inspector at Pescara, decided to return there themselves to find him. The story ends happily as they found their 14 year old cat happily sunbathing outside the station, patiently waiting the return of his family. 

​That's all from me for today, I'll be back with more tomorrow. Buona giornata. 

Last updated: Saturday 27th March 2021 at 17:24 CET

Key: Purple shows an improvement and orange a deterioration

Number of new coronavirus cases in Italy today: 23,839 ​- decrease of 121 from equivalent day last week (20th March - 23,718)

Number of people currently infected in Italy: 571,878 (increase of 5,167 compared to previous day)​

Weekly Comparison

Total number of new cases in the last 7 days (21st - 27th March): 145,571

Total number of new cases in previous 7 day period (14th - 20th March): 154,423

Weekly difference: decrease of 8,852 (-6%)

Testing

Number of tests carried out for today's figures: 357,154

Previous day number of tests: 354,982

Positivity rate: 6.7% 

Yesterday's positivity rate: 6.8% 

Vaccinations

Vaccinations carried out in last 24 hours: 252,010

Vaccinations carried out in previous 24 hour period: 258,808

First dose vaccinations in last 24 hours: 177,373

First dose vaccinations in previous 24 hour period: 177,170

Second dose vaccinations in last 24 hours: 74,637

Second dose vaccinations in previous 24 hour period: 81,368

Total number of vaccinations carried out: 9,017,095

Total number of people vaccinated with first and second doses: 2,787,749
​

Good morning everyone on Friday 26th March. With the weekend almost upon us, let's have a look at what's happening in Italy at the moment. 

The pandemic is the obvious first port of call and yesterday in Italy there were 23,696 new cases of Covid-19, a drop of just over 1,200 from the previous Thursday. The fact that the numbers are in a slight decline is starting to be picked up by the media in general but we're still a very long way from where we need to be and those tragic deaths are mounting up each day. Last Friday there were in excess of 25,000 new cases so let's hope for a significant reduction on that when the new figures are published later. 

It's just been announced that the latest R number (the reproduction rate of the virus) is down from 1.16 to 1.08. That's another little sign of encouragement but as we all know by now, anything above 1 means the virus is containing to grow. The Italian Government has stated its aim of providing half a million jabs per day but we're still some way short of that; yesterday there were a total of 233,563 doses given out and although this does represent something of an upturn, it's still less than half of the target number. 

We seem to be experiencing some "pandemic fatigue" in Italy at the moment. Despite those unacceptably high figures of new cases and relatively small number of vaccinations being carried out, there are growing calls to end the current lockdown after Easter. Good Friday is just a week away and the whole country will be under the strictest, red zone restrictions from that day until Tuesday 6th April which is the day after "pasquetta", known as Easter Monday in other countries. One of Italy's most controversial politicians, the right wing Matteo Salvini is pushing for April to be the month of rebirth when the country can get back to work, while  many of the nation's schoolchildren are staging protests today against their obligation for distance-learning. 

Of course it would be lovely to just stop all the restrictions and get on with our lives but it's clearly not going to be as simple as that. We're still at a very delicate stage where vaccine supplies are insufficient and the below average temperatures are keeping the infection rate high. If the R rate is above 1 now even with all the restrictions in place, it will almost certainly rise further if restrictions are lifted. 

Are there any signs of the weather coming to the rescue? Well there just might be, yes. Pretty much the whole country will be bathed in early spring sunshine for much of the weekend and the temperatures are thankfully on the rise. Rome and Palermo are both back up to 16° Celsius today and although that's barely enough to encourage the removal of a jacket, as we head into early next week I can see the number 22° C flashing up on the screen for Tuscany. Once we get into those sorts of temperatures, there's a good chance we'll see the Covid figures dropping more sharply. We only have last year to go on as evidence of that so whilst we still don't know for sure, let's keep an eye on any correlation between warm weather and low numbers of new cases. 

At this point I'd like to mention a couple of very important birthdays that took place this week. First, and in order of age, is the city of Venice which completed its 1,600th year yesterday, March 25th. Quite how they (the mysterious "they" that we always refer to) know this was the exact date on which a city was established is unclear but let's not quibble. Venice was established therefore in the year 421 AD as the thousand or so years of the medieval period started. The medieval period gave way to the Renaissance and one of the icons of that era was the poet Dante. His most famous work was The Divine Comedy and as coincidence would have it, that same date of 25th March is the one that scholars ascribe to the start of the journey into the afterlife in Dante's masterpiece. So whilst Venice was celebrating its 1,600th birthday yesterday, the so-called Dantedì had its 700th anniversary. 

Incidentally, if you look closely at the word Dantedì, you'll notice the letter i at the end has a reverse-accent instead of a dot above it. Whenever you see that letter, it means you must put the emphasis there. This is in fact the way that each of the five Italian weekdays are spelt. It's a little difficult to explain just in writing but if you can imagine the way you currently say "Friday", you naturally put the emphasis on the first syllable (the Fri bit). With the Italian equivalent, you need to put more emphasis on the dì part of venerdì for example.  

Dante is most closely associated with the city of Florence which I recently featured on this blog while Venice also featured here quite recently. So I won't go into great details on either of those cities again for a while but instead, I'll use it as an opportunity to plug a new idea I have for the website. I have categorised everything in Italy under some kid of list such as "Cathedrals of Italy" or "Hill Towns of Italy" to give just two examples. I've always found it difficult to whittle these numbers down to just a small number but I'm planning of creating some smaller versions of these lists called "Top Tens" and perhaps incorporating them into a slightly different blog on Fridays. So whereas some of the lists I've created run into the 20s and 30's, I'll create a new section on the website with no more than ten of each.

So what do you think to the idea? I personally hate the links that often pop-up for these kinds of lists as I often find they're poorly researched but worse than that, the page is almost unreadable because of the amount of ads. I have a strict policy on each of my websites of just one ad at the bottom of each page so it's out of the way. So at least in that way, I think these top tens might be a little but better and more useful for people planning trips to Italy. 

I'll leave you to ponder that idea with some ideas for the top ten cities in Italy. I'll be putting my own list together soon but if I asked you to vote for your favourite one or two, which would they be and why? I won't ask for answers on a postcard (it's amazing to think people really used to go and buy a postcard before sending their requests in to Blue Peter and the like!), just a simple comment on Facebook should do the trick. 

​Have a great weekend everyone and let's hope the world is in a slightly better state by the time of the next blog on Monday.