Coronavirus Concerns Flare Up Again Carrier
Equally Coronavirus Reappears in Italian republic, Migrants Go a Target for Politicians
Right-wing politicians say migrants threaten Italy by bringing Covid-nineteen with them, fifty-fifty as official data shows "minimal" effect from new arrivals.
POZZALLO, Italia — As the summer vacation season draws to a shut in Italy, a flare-upward of Covid-xix cases is fueling a surge in anti-immigrant sentiment, fifty-fifty though the government says that migrants are but a modest part of the problem.
Sicily's president, Nello Musumeci, ordered the closure of all migrant centers on the island final weekend, saying it was impossible to foreclose the spread of the illness at the facilities. And although a court blocked him, saying that he did non have the authority to close them, his order underlined the challenges Italy faces as correct-fly politicians seek to rekindle a polarizing debate virtually clearing in a country hit difficult by the pandemic.
In Pozzallo, a town in southern Sicily that has the highest rate of infection amidst newly arrived migrants, Roberto Ammatuna, the center-left mayor, has found himself trying to balance fears of a coronavirus influx with an obligation to rescue migrants in distress at sea.
"Our citizens need to feel safe and protected, because we are here in the front lines of Europe," he said in an interview in his office overlooking the turquoise waters of the Mediterranean. "No one wants migrants who are ill with Covid," but, he said, "nosotros can't stop rescuing people at ocean."
In one week in August, 73 migrants tested positive out of almost 200 quarantined in Pozzallo. About 11,700 migrants have reached Sicily since June, and 3 percentage either tested positive upon arrival or during the quarantine flow that the Italian authorities imposed inside shelters.
Just Franco Locatelli, the president of Italy'south Superior Wellness Council, a government advisory torso, said migrants' role in bringing Covid-19 back to Italy was "minimal."
In the first 2 weeks of August, around 25 percent of new infections registered in the country were imported from abroad, according to Italia'southward National Health Found. Over half of those were Italians who had traveled abroad, and many others were foreigners who already lived in Italian republic and were returning to the country.
Less than v percentage of the full were new immigrants, according to Italian republic'due south Health Ministry.
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Italia was 1 of the worst-hit countries when the coronavirus struck Europe this year, with over 35,000 deaths recorded, before a strict lockdown helped reduce the outbreak's spread. Controls were gradually lifted as summer approached, and a surge of new cases arose, often linked to young people gathering in crowded nightclubs.
Although at that place take been outbreaks in migrant centers, the seasonal summer flow of migrants heading for Italian republic across the Mediterranean and from Eastern Europe has intensified fears of a more general resurgence of the virus.
Last weekend, a ship carrying hundreds of migrants from Africa and the Middle East, about 20 of whom had tested positive for Covid-xix, circled the waters around Sicily. They were turned abroad by mayor after mayor, before somewhen docking in Augusta, in the southeast.
"Outlaw state," Matteo Salvini, the leader of the anti-immigrant League party and a onetime interior minister, said of Sicily on Twitter this week. "An invasion of illegal migrants, a boom of infections, Sicily is collapsing."
The message beingness pushed by Mr. Salvini, whose political rise was forged by stoking fears of immigration and misdeed before he and his party were ousted from the government concluding year, has been taken up by other correct-wing politicians, even equally the League has declined in popularity.
"Nosotros can't beget that this state, after all its efforts and the success in the fight against the pandemic, finds itself in a difficult situation because of the lack of controls," said Massimiliano Fedriga, a League member and president of the Friuli Venezia Giulia region.
Mr. Fedriga was speaking at a rally outside a facility in the northeastern city Udine from which 9 had escaped. The center, designed for 320 people but hosting 460 asylum seekers, had been put under quarantine afterwards several coronavirus cases were discovered at that place.
Many Italians say the real result regarding migrants is the need to limit the spread of the virus at existing centers, which are not designed to quarantine and isolate people.
"There is no explosion of arrivals," Gianfranco Schiavone, the vice president of the Association of Juridical Studies on Clearing, said in a telephone interview. "The big difference, all the same, is the complication of managing arrivals, with isolation and quarantine."
Showers and bathrooms for vi people are generally adequate in such centers, said Carmelo Lauretta, a doctor in accuse of disease control in the Pozzallo area. "But not for Covid."
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This month, Italian republic'due south government banned dancing in nightclubs and dancing halls, recognizing that people were letting downward their guard. Many regions introduced testing at ports, airports and train stations. But controlling the spread of virus among the roughly 60,700 migrants who live in large shelters scattered throughout the land has been a bigger claiming.
"Foreigners in Italian republic are more in danger of getting ill, because they are more segregated, live in poorer hygienic weather and in big groups," Matteo Villa, an clearing researcher with Italy's Establish for International Political Studies, said in a telephone interview. "Simply that has to do with segregation, not with their ethnicity or origin."
In early August, the virus spread through a migrant eye in Treviso, in northern Italy, infecting 256 of the 293 people housed there, making it one of the country's biggest recent coronavirus clusters.
"Everybody got it," Baxso Sanyang, a 28-year-old Gambian migrant who shared a room with 2 young men who had tested positive before catching the virus himself, said in a telephone interview. "There was no selection."
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Mario Conte, the mayor of Treviso, from Mr. Salvini's political party, said that given the atmospheric condition in the center, the spread was inevitable. "This shows a failure by the state," he said.
Keeping nearly 300 people in one place is "already complicated when things are normal," he said. But with Covid, "information technology is completely unmanageable."
Many of the migrants coming to Italy are passing through the Western Balkans every bit the easing of anti-Covid measures allows them to travel from Greece, through Italian republic and and then to northern Europe. Right-wing regional governments in Italy have asked Rome to close downwards small crossings with neighboring Slovenia and are increasingly sending people back across the border.
Amongst those trying to cross into Italy was Shahid Mehmood, 23, from Islamic republic of pakistan, who was sent back to Slovenia in June.
Paradigm
"When I told my parents Italy pushed me back, they didn't believe me, because they said Italy doesn't push button back," he said by phone from the camp in Bosnia where he later ended upward. "Only that inverse with coronavirus."
Even as some politicians stir up anti-immigrant sentiments, many Italians say they are far more concerned most people throughout the state letting downwards their guards after travel links reopened, despite required testing for those coming from many destinations.
In Pozzallo, a 800-rider boat now offers fast daily connections with Malta, which Italy considers risky after a contempo coronavirus outbreak there.
"I am more worried nigh that and the young going to parties and discos with no face masks to observe out 2 days after that they have Covid," said Isabel Gugliotta, 17, sitting at a Pozzallo beach bar.
"Why should I worry about migrants?" she said. "Any person tin transmit it. We all merely need to act responsibly."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/28/world/europe/coronavirus-italy-migrants.html
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