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Italy’s schools warned to ‘avoid gatherings’ as Covid cases rise

As Italy’s new school year began, masks and hand sanitiser were distributed in schools and staff were asked to prevent gatherings to help stem an increase in Covid infections.

Published: 11 September 2023 12:48 CEST
Some Covid protections may be reinstated as Italy's schoolchildren return to class.
Italy's schoolchildren return to class in 2021. This year masks are not mandated but have been made available in schools. Photo by Vincenzo PINTO / AFP.

Pupils returned to school in many parts of Italy on Monday and authorities said they were distributing masks and hand sanitiser amid a post-summer increase in the number of recorded cases of Covid–19.

“The advice coming from principals, teachers and janitors is to avoid gatherings of students, especially in these first days of school,” Mario Rusconi, head of Italy’s Principals’ Association, told Rai news on Monday.

He added that local authorities in many areas were distributing masks and hand sanitizer to schools who had requested them.

“The use of personal protective equipment is recommended for teachers and students who are vulnerable,” he said, confirming that “use is not mandatory.”

A previous requirement for students to wear masks in the classroom was scrapped at the beginning of the last academic year.

Walter Ricciardi, former president of the Higher Health Institute (ISS), told Italy’s La Stampa newspaper on Monday that the return to school brings the risk of increased Covid infections.

Ricciardi described the health ministry’s current guidelines for schools as “insufficient” and said they were “based on politics rather than scientific criteria.”

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Recorded cases of Covid have increased in most Italian regions over the past three weeks, along with rates of hospitalisation and admittance to intensive care, as much of the country returns to school and work following the summer holidays.

Altogether, Italy recorded 21,309 new cases in the last week, an increase of 44 percent compared to the 14,863 seen the week before.

While the World Health Organisation said in May that Covid was no longer a “global health emergency,” and doctors say currently circulating strains of the virus in Italy are not a cause for alarm, there are concerns about the impact on elderly and clinically vulnerable people with Italy’s autumn Covid booster campaign yet to begin.

“We have new variants that we are monitoring but none seem more worrying than usual,” stated Fabrizio Maggi, director of the Virology and Biosafety Laboratories Unit of the Lazzaro Spallanzani Institute for Infectious Diseases in Rome

He said “vaccination coverage and hybrid immunity can only translate into a milder disease in young and healthy people,” but added that “vaccinating the elderly and vulnerable continues to be important.”

Updated vaccines protecting against both flu and Covid are expected to arrive in Italy at the beginning of October, and the vaccination campaign will begin at the end of October, Rai reported.

Amid the increase in new cases, Italy’s health ministry last week issued a circular mandating Covid testing on arrival at hospital for patients with symptoms.

Find more information about Italy’s current Covid-19 situation and vaccination campaign on the Italian health ministry’s website (available in English).

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HEALTH

OPINION: Why changing your doctor in Italy can be a nightmare

Italy is known for its bureaucratic challenges but changing your doctor will likely give you the biggest headache of them all, writes Silvia Marchetti.

Published: 4 July 2024 16:18 CEST
OPINION: Why changing your doctor in Italy can be a nightmare

I know from personal experience that one of the worst things anyone can go through in Italy is having to deal with changing one’s family doctor (medico di famiglia or medico di base).

It is the public general practitioner paid by taxpayers’ money and assigned to locals and foreigners by the Health Ministry based on their residency. 

After being followed by the same doctor since the age of 19, mine just recently retired, vanishing into thin air without saying anything or giving any public notice or announcement.

Not even an email, and my family frequently contacts him for medicine prescriptions. He should have, by law, widely publicised his retirement among his 1,000 patients, but nearly everyone, like me, all of a sudden found themselves doctor-less and without the possibility of continuing their medications. Not even those with chronic diseases.

READ ALSO: The key Italian vocabulary you’ll need for a visit to the doctor

When I called him, he apologised saying he had hung a small note at the entrance of his studio a week before leaving, but somehow most patients missed it. He then forwarded the contact of his replacement, a new doctor in town, but she couldn’t take any more patients on board as she had already reached her quota assigned by the health authorities. 

So I had to re-register as a ‘brand new’ patient with another unknown doctor in my area, and to do so I had to go to the local health unit (ASL), queue up for the required paperwork, and then meet the new doctor. That’s when I discovered that there were no pre-existing records nor files about my medicines, as if I had never existed, and my new doctor had to create a new profile. 

This left me totally baffled. It is unacceptable that with modern technology and centralised databases doctors can’t share patient information or leave records when they go.

I wonder what was the whole point of setting up the fascicolo sanitario (health file) to keep track of patients’ data if it appears to be of no use

Unfortunately, there is very little people can do to avoid what I went through, I’m afraid. It’s one of those Kafka-style, typical Italian hassles foreigners often find themselves trapped in. And if it’s a nuisance for Italians, it’s even more so for outsiders to the perverse logics of the Italian system. 

READ ALSO: Five tips to help you survive a trip to the Italian pharmacy

Unless you’re on really good terms with your doctor and he or she has always told you what their retirement year will be, all you can do is ask them every once in a while if they intend to retire anytime soon. Word of mouth helps, especially in small villages, where everyone knows each other and might also personally know the doctor and what their plans are. Gossiping at the bar, the barber and butcher, or while shopping for groceries, could be a good way to keep up to date with evolving situations. 

But there are no real tips I can give to totally avoid going through the hell of changing doctor in a last-minute emergency and not of your own volition because even the local health units have no clue as to when doctors will decide to retire. 

Italy is a country of old people, doctors paid by the state tend to regularly extend their practice so they get higher pensions when they eventually retire.

However, friends and neighbours can help too. If you hear from reliable sources that your doctor will be leaving their job in a couple of months, it is advisable to change even before he or she retires so as to avoid finding yourself in unpleasant situations. Also, to make it smoother, it’s always helpful to visit the health unit regularly to see if any new, young general practitioner has just arrived in town and has zero patients so lots of space to take you and your entire family on board before the quota is reached. 

I hope that going forward it will be the local health unit that communicates by email to each patient when a doctor retires. 

Do you agree with Silvia? Share your own views about the challenges of changing doctors in Italy. 

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