Italy opens again amid hopes for real economic relaunch
Italy’s gradual reopening after six months of rotating virus closures is satisfying no one: Too cautious for some, too hasty for others
April 26, 2021, 7:14 PM
6 min read
Share to FacebookShare to TwitterEmail this articlePeople wear face masks and are distantly seated as they wait to watch a movie at the Quattro Fontane cinema, in Rome, Monday, April 26, 2021. Italy is gradually reopening on Monday after six months of rotating virus lockdowns. (Cecilia Fabiano/LaPresse via AP)
MILAN -- Lunch-time diners filled tables on Milan’s landmark Piazza Duomo even on a cloudy, windswept Monday, proof of the pent-up demand for eating out as Italy begins its second, and many hope last, reopening of the COVID-19 pandemic.
After six months of rotating on-again, off-again closures, restaurants, bars, museums and cinemas opened to the public in most of the country under a gradual reopening plan that is seen as too cautious for some, too hasty for others.
The nation’s weary virologists and health care workers fear that even the tentative reopening laid out by Premier Mario Draghi’s government will invite a free-or-all, signs of which were seen over the weekend with parks and squares filling up in cities from Rome to Turin, Milan to Naples.
“It is illusory to think that you give a sign of opening, and you don’t see people around. Perfection doesn’t exist,’’ Milan Mayor Giuseppe Sala said Monday. “You also have to be a little tolerant, and also a little careful.”
For restaurant owners struggling to survive, the return of outdoor dining is too little, too late, and the continued 10 p.m. curfew puts a damper on theater re-openings and sends a bad public relations message for international tourism heading into the second pandemic summer.
Pizzeria Pino was granted rare permission by Milan officials to set up tables along the porticoes lining Piazza Duomo, some compensation for the lost indoor seating, as it served seated customers for the first time since February. The permit will last through the summer.
“We can only be happy,” waiter Antonio Carullo said. “Because we have many friends who have restaurants who don’t have a lot of space outside, or none at all, and they are still at home, out of work.”
The government's vision is that the renewed economic activity of the gradual reopening — continuing with outdoor pools next month, gyms after that and larger events and fairs from mid-June — will be turbocharged by 200 billion euros ($241 billion) in EU and Italian recovery funds that was outlined in parliament on Monday.
”I am sure that honesty, intelligence and the taste for the future will prevail over corruption, stupidity and vested interests," Draghi told lawmakers in Rome.
Under pressure from right-wing partners, the government moved the openings a week earlier than initially planned, allowing free travel for the first time in months among 15 of Italy’s 21 regions and autonomous provinces under the lowest levels of coronavirus restrictions. The number of people who can visit friends and family at any one time was doubled from two to four. Restaurants and bars can seat people for open-air dining. Contact sports resumed outdoors.
In Rome’s Campo dei Fiori, restaurant owners set up tables outside and swept the cobblestones to welcome customers for sit-down service for the first time since mid-March. Venice remained empty of its usual throngs of tourists, but café’ owners wiped tables and chairs and placed them outside hoping for the local customers.
“It's a bit of a rebirth,’’ said café owner Stefano Baldan in Campo Santa Margherita
The reopenings come even as Italy’s intensive care wards remain above the 30% threshold for alarm. Italy’s vaccine campaign is also still well shy of its 500,000-shots-a-day goal and is only now moving to protect people in the 70-79 age bracket. The World Health Organization says people over 65 have accounted for the vast majority of COVID-19 deaths in Europe.
