Govt to draft road map to ease restrictions says Speranza

(ANSA) - ROME, APR 15 - The government will draft a "road map" to ease COVID-19 restrictions "in a unanimous way", Health Minister Roberto Speranza told parliament Thursday.
    "Even to those who raise polemics (about reopening) every day I say we need unity," he told the House.
    "We must not get the timeframe and the process for reopening wrong," Speranza stressed.
    "Let us look to the new phase with trust", he said, stressing that "I told the truth even when it was uncomfortable".
    On vaccines, Speranza said 50 million more doses would arrive by the end of June and said there had been "errors" in the EU's negotiation with drug companies but it had been "good" to buy the vaccines together.
    On the AstraZeneca vaccine, Speranza said it was "safe.
    effective and a life saver".
    In all, he noted, there had only been 18 fatal events out of 32 million AstraZeneca jabs.
    He voiced the hope that there would soon be "clarity" on the Johnson&Johnson jab, after the US paused it, to be able to "swiftly use that vaccine too".
    Finally, the minister said that "you can't call doctors heroes and then abandon them". (ANSA).