Italy reports over 25k new coronavirus cases

Italy registered 25,271 new coronavirus cases and 356 fatalities in the last 24 hours, which took the overall caseload and death toll to 960,373 and 41,750, respectively, the Health Ministry said.

Monday's figure marked a moderate slowdown compared to the 32,616 new cases reported a day earlier, Xinhua news agency quoted the Ministry as saying.

The total number of active cases in the country is 573,334, the vast majority of which (542,849) are currently isolated at home with no or mild symptoms.

The number of patients in intensive care units, however, grew by 100 on Monday, reaching 2,849, the latest data showed.

The latest figures came as more regions were expected to implement tougher restrictions, after the cabinet, regional governors, and the government's advising technical-scientific committee (CTS) met in the afternoon to assess the overall pandemic picture provided by the National Institute of Health (ISS).

The regions of Abruzzo, Umbria, Toscana, Liguria, and Basilicata will be declared "orange zones" — meaning they are now considered at middle risk, Abruzzo governor Marco Marsilio told Ansa news agency on Monday.

"The provision that the minister is about to sign in the evening will enter into force by Wednesday," the governor said.

To tackle the second wave of the pandemic, the government on on November 7 introduced a three-tiered system that split the country into three zones — yellow, or low risk; orange, or medium risk; and red, or high risk — according to the level of virus transmission and the situation of the public health system in each region.

Implemented along with a national curfew from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., this system would stay in force until December 3 at least.

So far, four regions have been placed under the red zone — Lombardy, Piedmont, Aosta Valley, and Calabria — and subjected to restrictions equal to a soft lockdown.

Southern Apulia and Sicily were the only two regions put into the orange zone so far, and had to implement milder restrictions, while the rest of the country remained in the yellow zone..