Italy will allow its coronavirus-related state of emergency to expire on March 31, Prime Minister Mario Draghi said on Wednesday, because the success of the vaccine campaign had greatly improved the situation in the country.
The state of emergency, first introduced Jan. 31, 2020, gave national and regional authorities special powers to cut through red tape and act swiftly on public health measures. It was renewed several times as Italy was hit with successive waves of coronavirus cases.
About 78 percent of Italy’s residents are fully vaccinated. Though the most recent surge of coronavirus cases, driven by the Omicron variant, has receded significantly, the country is still averaging roughly 50,000 new cases a day, more than at any time before the surge took hold in December, according to a New York Times database.
Speaking to local authorities and entrepreneurs in Florence on Wednesday, Mr. Draghi said that Italy needed to emerge from the pandemic to prosper. He said his government was “aware of the fact that the soundness of the recovery depends above all on overcoming the emergency of the moment.”
The time had come, he said, for a gradual return to normal conditions, with schools kept open and quarantine rules relaxed. He said Italy’s color-coded system of coronavirus restrictions, which limited access to a wide array of activities, would be dropped when the emergency ends.
Mr. Draghi also said that rules requiring Italy’s national health pass would gradually be phased out, starting with outdoor activities. The pass, which indicates whether the holder has been fully vaccinated and given a booster shot or has recovered from Covid-19, is currently mandatory for people over 50 to be allowed to work, among other things.
“We will continue to monitor the situation of the pandemic,” and to intervene if necessary, Mr. Draghi said. “But our objective is to open everything as soon as possible,” he added, to applause.
