Venice Carnival 2022, doctors: “Better to move it in the summer”
“The carnival? If only it were possible, it would be better to think of a “summer edition”, other than in a month ». Stefano Rigo, territorial contact person of the Italian Federation of general practitioners, says this with a smile, but the concern for the spread of the virus in a street demonstration is clear. Because above all a political clash has opened on the Venetian Carnival, but not only, after the New Year in Piazza San Marco where ten thousand people gathered around midnight between the Basilica and the bell tower of San Marco.
“Wrong messages”
The lightning toast lasted less than half an hour, but the videos of those twenty minutes did not fail to get up. «What happened is the fruit of wrong messages launched, of the will to return at any cost to a “before” (the pandemic) who was already critical, that is to the “events” that bring nothing but inconvenience – said the city councilor Gianfranco Bettin (Green and progressive) – Today it is doubly dangerous to insist that Venice will hold its Carnival “at any cost”. It means being able to influence the categories to invest in an event that is not certain what to have. And it means preparing the ground for new, risky gatherings. Not “at any cost”, but “under certain conditions” ». It is no coincidence that the categories push for the event in safety. But the opposition makes the barricades. «It was a mistake to announce the Carnival as certain. What happened in San Marco actually also occurred in Rialto but it also happens every day on the vaporetti, where we get continuous reports of poor control. Are the Municipality’s monitoring tools adequate or are they only used to count the presences after the event? It might be worth thinking about arriving by reservation already during the Carnival period, at this point », intervenes the group leader pd Monica Sambo.
“Precautions but let’s move on”
For his part, Deputy Mayor Andrea Tomaello (Lega) remarked that the New Year’s Eve episode was quick and marginal: “The appointments in the square, if any, they will certainly adopt stringent quota measures and verification of accesses. In what modalities, however, we cannot yet decide: we have to wait for the next decree, the current ones do not arrive until Carnival. But with the treatments it is right to go on ». The categories are convinced of this, albeit with different visions: for Claudio Scarpa, director of the Venetian Hoteliers’ Association, “you cannot think of suspending everything, there is a solution, and it is the vaccine, everyone must reach the third dose”; Ernesto Pancin, director of the Association of exhibitors and public establishments, looks at the problem from another perspective and, like Bettin, he thinks it is necessary to change the flows through the city. “Even without events or fireworks, Piazza San Marco is enough to attract thousands of people. Instead, efforts should be made to scatter these presences also in the rest of the historic center, more than the turnstiles in piazzale Roma it would be useful to remove some of the landing stages in San Zaccaria ».
“Soon a new peak”
The medical front, however, remains the most cautious: «We are in a critical moment, in the ready two weeks between the contacts of the holidays and the return to school we will see another peak of infections, as we have observed in these two years – continues Rigo – The vaccine protects against the most severe symptoms, helps reduce the hospitalizations but it is not a guarantee of immunity so attention must remain high. Also because there is not only Covid-19, the health system must manage all the other diseases and with these numbers it is very difficult “.
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January 4, 2022 (change January 4, 2022 | 10:11)
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