Family doctors call for COVID red zone across Italy

(ANSA) - ROME, NOV 10 - Italy's family doctors on Tuesday called for a COVID 'red zone' to be declared in the whole of the country amid the second wave of the pandemic.
    "I would decide a red zone in the whole of Italy," said Silvestro Scotti, president of the Italian federation of doctors of general medicine (FIMMG).
    "It seems absurd to me that (the current three-tiered system) was decided when the North had such large contagion rates," he said.
    Speaking to Sky TG24, he called the three-colour system "a joke of a jigsaw puzzle".
    The government last week introduced the three-tiered colour system to combat the second wave of COVID.
    This saw Calabria, Lombardy, Piedmont and Val d'Aosta go into a soft lockdown after being classed as high-contagion-risk red zones.
    The autonomous province of Bolzano joined them on Monday, when five regions - Abruzzo, Umbria, Basilicata, Liguria and Tuscany - were bumped up from yellow to orange zones, joining Puglia and Sicily.
    These areas have slightly less stringent restrictions as they have been classed as medium-high risk while the rest of the country is moderate risk - yellow.
    Under the restrictions, which apply until, December 3, non-essential shops and markets are closed in red zones and travel outside one's home town is banned, except for work or health reasons.
    On Sunday Filippo Anelli, the president of the Italian federation of medical guilds (FNOMCEO), called for Italy to be put into a "total lockdown throughout the country".
    In a Facebook post, Anelli said the national health system cannot cope with the rising number of COVID-19 cases and warned Italy could suffer 10,000 more deaths than the current rate in a month. (ANSA).