Italy may have hit the peak of its coronavirus outbreak after two weeks of lockdown as its death toll dropped for the second day in a row.
There have now been 6,077 deaths, the highest in the world, but crucially the daily total of 602 yesterday was again lower than Saturday’s peak of 793.
New cases registered totalled 4,789, lower than the 6,557 recorded on Saturday, further evidence that closing shops and restaurants and strictly limiting travel since March 10 may be paying off.
“We are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel,” Giulio Gallera, the health chief in Italy’s hardest hit region, Lombardy, said. “Today is the first positive day in a hard month.”
He emphasised that it was the moment to