Govt extends state of emergency to March 31

(ANSA) - ROME, DEC 14 - Premier Mario Draghi's government on Tuesday extended the COVID-19 state of emergency until March 31 at a cabinet meeting, sources said.
    The cabinet approved a decree containing 11 articles extending all current provisions regarding the health emergency.
    The state of emergency, which gives the government special powers and has been extended several times since first being declared when the pandemic broke out early in 2020, had been set to expire at the end of this year.
    "At the cabinet meeting today more decisions will be taken on the emergency that we are going through," Health Minister Roberto Speranza said earlier.
    Sources had said the government might make wearing facemasks outdoors obligatory over the Christmas and New Year holidays, but this did not feature in the final decree..
    The decree also sets up a hub to stock vaccines at a major military facility in Italy, sources said as the cabinet meeting was still going on.
    Strong growth of the new and more infectious Omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus is likely in Italy, a health ministry expert told ANSA Tuesday.
    Ministry consultant Walter Ricciardi noted that the new strain would be prevalent in the UK and Denmark by the end of the week, already representing 40% of new cases in Britain.
    He stressed: "It is presumable that the behaviour of the Omicron variant will be the same in our country, with a strong growth in cases.
    "The variant's growth trend is in fact proving to be similar in all countries, but we still don't have certain data insofar as we are doing less sequencing than others".
    Speranza on Tuesday reiterated his call for people have a third COVID-19 vaccine dose, saying this was crucial to curtail the impact of the highly contagious Omicron strain of the coronavirus.
    "The third doses are even more important in order to face the Omicron variant," Speranza said at a conference on health services in the home and palliative care.
    "We are seeing this in the data that is coming in. "The epidemic continues to be a real, concrete problem that it is necessary to deal with.
    "Naturally, we (now) have instruments that we did not have a year ago, starting with the vaccines".
    The government has brought in a 'Super Green Pass' COVID-19 health-certificate system which, for the moment, excludes unvaccinated people from most social, cultural, leisure and sporting activities.
    Since the government brought in this system, there has been an increase in the number of previously unvaccinated people getting jabs.
    Indeed, over 88% of the Italian population aged 12 and over have had at least one dose of a COVID vaccine.
    "The figures of the last few days have been highly encouraging," said Speranza.
    "Yesterday half a million doses of COVID vaccine were given (in Italy).
    "In total over 100 million doses have been given and in recent weeks 450,000 people have had their first dose".
    Italy is set to start vaccinating five-to-11-year-old this week and Speranza said the number of parents booking jabs for these younger children was high. (ANSA).