Italy's Covid incidence rate, hospital bed occupancy falling

Rome, Jan 29 (IANS) The incidence of coronavirus cases and occupancy rate of hospital beds in Italy have both decreased, the latest data showed.

According to the weekly report carried out by the National Institute of Health (ISS) across the 20 Italian regions, the Covid-19 incidence rate dropped to 1,823 cases per 100,000 inhabitants between January 21-27, compared to 2,011 cases in the previous week, reports Xinhua news agency.

The report also showed that the country's average reproduction number (RT) between January 5-18 fell to 0.97, which is "below the pandemic threshold", the ISS noted.

An RT below 1 indicates that one infectious person would on average transmit the infection to less than one other person.

In the previous period (December 29, 2021 - January 11, 2022), the RT was 1.31.

Pressure on the national health system is also decreasing, with the rate of occupancy of hospital beds by Covid-19 patients on ordinary wards dropping to 30.4 per cent from 31.6 per cent.

Meanwhile, the rate in intensive care units fell to 16.7 per cent, from 17.3 per cent in the previous survey.

The new data supports an announcement made by Italy's Covid emergency commissioner Francesco Paolo Figliuolo earlier this week.

"We have good news: it seems we have reached the plateau of the curve for the Omicron variant... We are going downward," he said.

In a separate report on Friday, the National Health Institute said the Omicron variant represents some 95.8 per cent of all infections, according to data gathered on January 17.

This week, Italy has surpassed the threshold of 10 million coronavirus cases since the pandemic broke out in February 2020.

As of Saturday, the country has registered 10,683,948 Covid-19 cases and 145,537 deaths.