Why are cases in Italy still rising when they have been on lockdown for 3 weeks?

[AnxiousOverCovid]

Italy has been on lockdown for 23 days, from the 9th March. The number of new cases are starting to gradually reduce (thank goodness) but they are still rising. Yesterday there were 4053 new cases whilst their highest number of daily cases was 6557 cases on 21st March.

Surely during lockdown the only transmission that should occur for the majority of the cases is transmission within a family and occasionally transmission during rare trips to the supermarket or out for exercise? As well as hospital-acquired cases for both non-covid patients and medical staff.

Does that kind of transmission explain why there are still thousands of new cases each day or am I missing something?

Yes without a lock down it would be even worse. You would be looking at hundreds of thousands of cases.

“Yes without a lock down it would be even worse. You would be looking at hundreds of thousands of cases.”

Bloody hell you must have a sort of time machine, crystal ball invention is make such a bold statement.

Did you mean to put “I think” before that statement or are you God ?

No I assumed people would work that out but my opinion is based on what the scientists are saying.

You have an incubation period and then a period during which symptoms get worse, which can be up to 28 days.

However, I saw a press report in France which said that the numbers were shifting meaning that more patients were recovering and freeing up beds. Fingers crossed there will be more positive indications within the next few weeks.

Also - NB - lockdown isn't absolute - shopping, home deliveries, people working. It is restricted, but not to the same extent as in China, Korea.

Big multi-generational families?

Our Italian friend lives with her children, husband, parents & a grandparent. She’s 30!

Is it commonplace in Italy? I assumed it was

PS those time periods are to the best of knowledge known at the moment, I believe. The disease has only been known about for 3 months.

YangShanPo Some scientists are saying that, some say different. Their are millions of scientists around the World. There is no fact in science and what is “proved” is often then disproved. Try reading outside of the mainstream media.

Its airborne and people are still going out. So people going out during the lockdown will still get it.

Plus you incubate it for up to 14 days (probably longer) and then it takes an average of about 3 weeks to go from ill to death.

Pretty sure the WHO said it wasn’t airborne a few days ago

they did but various scientists are saying otherwise.

I would assume that a proportion of the new cases are doctors, nurses etc. and their families.

Oh that’s so confusing! But I guess science and research keeps evolving because it’s so new.

Thank you for the replies everyone. I guess 4053 new cases isn't a lot when you think that is in a population of 60.48 million and without lockdown it would be a lot higher? I don't know. It's so sad and scary knowing it's coming for us too and there is nothing we can do about it about from staying at home and waiting it out.

Your post doesn't make much sense how can the numbers both be reducing and rising?

The rate of increase is declining in Italy, Ruffle.

Yes, it is. But that's not what the OP says.

• “Yes without a lock down it would be even worse. You would be looking at hundreds of thousands of cases.”

Bloody hell you must have a sort of time machine, crystal ball invention is make such a bold statement.*

I guess you could look at the States and see that without a lockdown of the style Italy has adopted there would be hundred of thousand more cases? It’s not that hard.

There is no fact in science

Thanks for the laugh, I really needed it.

Lockdown in Italy has been restricted further only recently.
Before people were going out for silly things. Also, the wave of the disease moved from the north to the south, so it would be interesting to see where those new cases are. Some regions are doing so much better than others in terms of percentage.

the epidemiologists have saod clearly that once you go into lockdown it then takes 2-3 weeks before you begin to see a change in statistics.

It is one of the big problems, in that people get fed up and think it isn't working.
So, on that basis, about now they should start to see a change.

As pp said - 14 days incubation plus being ill for 2 weeks before you die = 4 weeks.

The rate of the increase in new infections has decreased.

Before lockdown, each infectious person infected 3 others on average. That number has decreased after lock down because the less people you come into contact with, the less people you will infect. Let's say it is 2.

If you had 10,000 infectious people showing symptoms on the day of lockdown, they will have already infected 30,000 people. That is why you see no change in the rate of new infections for some time after lockdown because, at first, the new confirmed cases are people who were infected before lockdown. However, by the time the effects of lockdown kick in, there are many more infected people. The 30,000 people infected the day before lockdown would have infected 90,000 people but now they only infect 60,000. The rate of new infections has gone down but the numbers are still increasing because there are more infectious people even though each one infects less people than before.

I think it is actually up to 14 days incubation and from then a possible 28 days from first mild symptoms? Can be much quicker for either or both too.

OP it is scary but if you look at the graphs for Italy, deaths are decreasing and recoveries increasing.

The death toll is the lowest in a week and they have extended lockdown till 13 April so that will be about 5 weeks lockdown in total by then I think .
So will see what happens then, are we about 2 weeks behind Italy ?

“Yes without a lock down it would be even worse. You would be looking at hundreds of thousands of cases.”

Bloody hell you must have a sort of time machine, crystal ball invention is make such a bold statement.

@Goingfarawsy The epidemiologists at Imperial have estimated that the total number of deaths in Italy would have been 52,000 by March 31 without lockdown rather than 12,500. That's 39,500 lives saved.