Italy's Lombardy again in virus crisis as Brescia sees surge

ROME (AP) — Italy’s northern Lombardy region, where Europe's coronavirus outbreak erupted last year, asked the national government Thursday for more vaccines to help stem a surge of new cases that are taxing the health system in the province of Brescia.

Brescia, with a population of around 1.2 million, has seen its daily caseload go from the mid-100s at the start of February to 901 on Wednesday, due in part to clusters of cases traced to the British variant. Doctors say the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients in Brescia's main public hospital has gone from an average of around 200 to 300 recently.

The region’s governor, Attilio Fontana, said he told the health minister during a call Thursday that Lombardy needed an “immediate delivery (of vaccines) in the territory where the virus is growing.”

Already, Lombardy — Italy’s most populous region — has imposed new lockdown measures in Brescia and revamped its vaccine strategy to redirect the jabs it has on hand to Brescia and nearby towns in neighboring Bergamo. The aim of the strategy is to inoculate as many people as possible as quickly as possible in the hardest-hit areas.

Guido Bertolasso, in charge of the vaccine campaign, said the region was going to bypass the 30% reserves that the national government recommends keeping on hand for second doses, and starting Thursday would begin vaccinating residents aged 60-79, well earlier than scheduled. Lombardy only recently began vaccinating people aged over 80, after prioritizing health care workers and residents of nursing homes.

The aim of the campaign, Bertolasso said, is to create a “health cordon” in the area with blanket vaccinations, basing the strategy on studies from Britain and Israel — and even on Lombardy's own data that show declines in infection rates as more people are vaccinated...