Phase 2 will last 6-8 mts . experts (2)

(ANSA) - Rome, April 8 - Phase two of the coronavirus emergency will last from six to eight months, experts said Wednesday. Phase two is what has been called the intermediate period the country will go through when the current stringent lockdown measures are eased but some restrictions will stay in place, meaning normal life has not yet resumed.
    "There will be other battles to fight", said physicist Alessandro Vespignani, while infectivologist Massimo Galli said that testing will be needed first to avoid spreading the recovery over an "infinite" time or, on the other hand, bringing it forward with the risk of creating new hotspots.
    Vespignani also said it would be a summer "without travel".
    The experts spoke after the coronavirus infection and deaths curves started falling on Tuesday.
    The government has said repeatedly that phase two would involve "living with the virus".
    Government sources said Wednesday phase two, which would be long, was "possible" after May 1, and they were "studying" procedures and categories less at risk to be brought out of lockdown first, and gradually for the moment.
    But the coronavirus infection curve is not falling in some regions, Rome university physicist Federico Ricci Tersenghi said Wednesday.
    He said it was "too soon" to ease the lockdown because it has not been possible to draft nationwide estimates and there was a "patchwork" of regional data.
    Tersenghi said it would be several weeks be fore containment measures could start being eased. Schools, meanwhile, are expected to reopen in September , but only for "online revision", sources said Wednesday.
    The head of the small business group in industrial employers group Confindustria, Carlo Robiglio, told ANSA Wednesday that small and medium businesses in Italy would risk going under unless they resume production in May.
    Robiglio, whose group Piccola Industria represents 98% of Confindustria's firms, said "this situation must find a solution in May, because if we go past the summer with a block of this type, the risks become extremely heavy.
    "Phase two must start for a series of activities by the end of April, the start of May".