ROME: Italy announced plans Saturday to set price limits on face masks and ramp up antibody testing as it nears the end of the world's longest active national coronavirus lockdown.
The Mediterranean country is awaiting a fateful decision this weekend about which of its restrictions will be lifted when the current regime expires on May 3.
This will determined both the pace at which the eurozone's third-largest economy claws its way out of recession and the freedoms 60 million Italians will enjoy in the summer months. Prime Minster Giuseppe Conte has reportedly been presented with a cautious proposal that involves a gradual easing over four weeks. Italians will probably be allowed to leave their homes freely for the first time since March 9 by early May.
Parks could reopen and the nation could start working its way out of its most traumatic experience since World War II. But reports say the vision laid out before Conte does not resemble life as Italians knew it.
Italy´s official death toll of 25,969 is still Europe´s highest and only second globally to the United States.
"The coronavirus has been weakened but not defeated," emergency response commissioner Domenico Arcuri told reporters.