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ITALY’S GOVERNMENT HAS said that it would make vaccination against Covid-19 compulsory from 15 February for everyone over the age of 50, in a bid to battle surging infections.
“We want to slow down the curve of contagion and encourage Italians who have not yet been vaccinated to do so,” Prime Minister Mario Draghi said during a cabinet meeting at which the measure was adopted, according to a statement.
“We are working in particular on the age groups that are most at risk of being hospitalised, to reduce pressure on hospital to save lives,” he added.
The new decree obliges people over 50 who do not work to get vaccinated, and those who do work to obtain a vaccine pass – which effectively covers all over 50s.
In another statement, the government said that “the vaccine pass will be necessary for people over 50 in the public and private sectors to access their workplace from 15 February.”
Out of Italy’s 59 million people, 28 million are over the age of 50, according to the Istat national statistics agency.
Late last month the government said that from January 10 a vaccination pass would be required to use public transport and access hotels, restaurant terraces and gyms.
Previously a health pass giving proof of vaccination – or a recent negative test – had been required.
As in much of Western Europe, Italy has seen its Covid cases soar in recent days, recording 189,000 on Wednesday, up from more than 170,000 yesterday.
Italy was the European country first hit by the pandemic in early 2020 and still has one of the highest death tolls, at more than 138,000.
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Let’s hope omicron will be the final fair well to covid causing us any serious issues.
Then hopefully all these rules and passport certs will be history and we will get on with life as before.
@Ann Morris Doolan: nice comment ann keep the faith.
@Ann Morris Doolan: If you believe that you believe anything. Vaccine passports are here to stay.
Ask yourself this question. If someone comes up with a miracle cure tomorrow. Would it be adopted globally and that person given a Nobel prize for saving the planet. OR would we silence them and ridicule them. Would we continue down the path of more vaccines and more boosters. More vaccine discrimination and more money for the vaccine makers.
@Diarmuid O’Braonáin: Very good point except if someone came up with a miracle cure tomorrow, there’d be anti-vaxxers using the same arguments to deny that and deny that it works. If there was a miracle cure I know which cohort of people I’d be putting money on to take it.
@Diarmuid O’Braonáin: unless this person was a multi millionaire or pharmaceutical company they wouldn’t have the money to do the required double blind testing regimen. That is the minimum standard for medicine approval. So without that they would probably be ridiculed and labelled a nut job!
New medicine release is a closed shop, the pharma companies decide what can get through FDA approvals as they are almost the only ones with the bank balance and resources to do so.
This is why there is limited data (in terms of longitudinal double blind studies) on the effect of lifestyle or cannabis on specific diseases. There is no money for pharma companies in it.
@Diarmuid O’Braonáin: you came her and think you did something
@Diarmuid O’Braonáin: you came her and think you did something
@Diarmuid O’Braonáin: you came here and think you did something .
Fascist Italy coming to the fore again.
@Mike Dunne: no Mick, they got burnt badly in the first 2 months of the pandemic. Making sure it doesn’t burn them again.
@Mike Dunne: I think they are trailblazers (after Greece of course).
Seems a bit much. Taking people’s rights away from them. Would it not be better to just charge unvaxinated people for any medical costs. Plenty of private hospitals out there who would be only too happy to charge them. Make it a financial choice
@David Saunders: It’s a hobson’s choice either way; because we have a group of people who’s principles are so inconsistent that they won’t trust the medical profession until they need the medical profession, at which point, they want equal treatment. Like babies.
@David Saunders: I’m so sick of using “peoples rights” as an argument. We all want our lives back and if that means we all need to get vaccinated then so be it. Maybe vaccines should have been mandatory from the beginning. Before the snowflakes woke up and decided to try and convince all the other numpties that vaccines made them magnetic.
@2thFairy: hold on a second, I’m far from an anti vaccer (double vaccinated and caught covid) but you say “we all want our lives back and if that means we all need to get vaccinated then so be it”. Problem is I am vaccinated, I am in a cohort that was statistically unlikely to require Hospital if I got covid while unvaccinated and I didn’t require hospital when I got covid. Basically I got vaccinated for no real benefit, I was told if we all got vaccinated we would “get our lives back” as you put it and stop transmission thereby helping older more vulnerable in society. With over 93% vaccinated we still have the highest case numbers in the world! I think I’ve come to the realisation that vaccines are great for older and at risk people but why bother for the rest of society. Same with masks, why bother if everyone that is vulnerable is vaccinated? Shutting restaurants and other hospitality at 8? Nphet making it up as they go along and they are the tail that’s wagging the government
Not long ago many commenters here ridiculed mandatory vaccinations as a tin foil hat conspiracy theory.
@mar: and now most of them agree with it. Its a slippery slope we’ve gone down. And seems to be getting worse. The data regarding vaccine efficacy is controlled by the vaccine companies (which have a financial incentive) and governments are just swallowing it whole.
@mar: you paraphrase to suit your comment. Many people thought mandatory vaccination unlikely in Ireland. Other countries have different laws.
@Jacqueline berry: dead right. We should demand smallpox and polio be reintroduced, it should be my choice to be vaccinated or not.
@Paul Clancy: chalk and cheese Paul. Did you require an MMR vaccine every few months? And a vaccine passport to eat a sandwich or have a drink?
@Jacqueline berry: Have we actively been in a worldwide pandemic for any of those vaccines when we got them, Jacqueline? Can only speak for myself but you don’t look old enough to have been :)
Good on them. We could do with growing a pair here. With 50% in ICU from unvaccinated (a mere 6% of the population)clogging up the system – then those that choose to not get the vaccine should as a minimum have to provide certs for work and be in temporary lockdown. It’s their choice not to be vaccinated and I don’t think it should be mandatory/ but there are consequences for your choices when they affect so many. At this stage it’s not about case numbers- it’s the hospitals and all the other acute care that’s getting further pushed back.
@Lucy Legacy: and the other 50% that are vaccinated and taking up ICU beds, what should be done about them? Should we not bed asking ourselves how 50% are make up of vaccinated people?
@Jacqueline berry: you forget how the vaccinated 50% represenent of 3.5 million eligible people who have recieved the vaccine, while the unvaccinated 50% represent about 200,000 people who are eligible to recieve the vaccine but chose not to or cannot recieve it due to curcumsrance.
@Jacqueline berry: Read Joe’s response. It’s a simple tale of ratio.
@Jacqueline berry: the vaccines were never 100% effective against hospitalizations, nor never claimed to be. There are break through cases, many in immune compromised patients and those with underlying conditions. They are people that did their best and were unlucky. The unvaccinated are there because of choice mostly. The stats don’t lie, if the 200,000 had taken the vaccine a tiny percentage of them would have ended up in hospital, this freeing up ICU beds. I’m tired of being locked down to protect the unvaccinated. Time for them to do a bit of civic duty too and stay home.
@Jacqueline berry: Honest question. Do you really not understand the percentages here? It would explain a lot. Because otherwise your comments are baffling.
@Lucy Legacy: how does being unvaxed risk affecting anyone else? It seems every1 who gets covid can transmit covid. Covid from an unvaxed person = covid from a vaxed person.
They don’t report daily numbers of Vaxed/Unvaxed in ICU beds due to covid (and covid alone), The 50pc has bn around for some time has surely fluctuated…
The personal risk borne by the unvaxed is also unclear…the virus affects ppl differently regardless. Vaxed people have also lost their lives to covid.
In any caae, in other aspects of life we have freedom to take risks to our own health.
The view that unvaxed people pose a greater risk needs to be challenged, not swallowed, if it the basis on which ppl lose their livelihoods, freedom and human rights, and on which ppl are stigmatised/ vilified.
@Jacqueline berry: Ye have to stop whinging Jacqueline. Its quite obvious. The whole wide world know the vaccine is working. But for some apparent reason you don’t. Ye can fluck away with your statistics though there shyte.
@Emily O’Brien: well said
@Emily O’Brien: Nice rant there. The. Unvaxed. Take. Up. A. Proportionally. Far. Higher. Number. Of. Hospital. And. ICU. Beds. Which. Is. The. Reason. We. Keep. Having. To. Talk. About. Restrictions. We. Are. Sick. Of. It. Read it 5 times and it might sink in but I wouldn’t hold my breath to be honest.
@Vonvonic: again not an anti vaccer but ye vaccine nuts do trigger me sometimes, do you really think if everyone was 100% vaccinated that we would have no more restrictions?
@Lucy Legacy: f
@Paul Gorry: is that the two shot, three shot or even four vaccines that are working ?
@Vonvonic: whats baffling about the high numbers of vaccinated needing hospitalization? Regardless of the ratio of vaccinated to unvacinated. And right now the data isn’t reliable. All we have to go on is the people who are able to get a pcr and be counted. I could numerous waiting on and unable to get a pcr.
@Paul Gorry: define your idea of a working vaccine? The benefits must out weigh the risks, and right now that’s looking less likely. Seems to me this virus will infect you regardless. The vaccine was some benefit with alpha, but after that things went downhill rapidly. And by the “whole world” who are you referring to? Governments? Because it seems to me that more and more are being in mandatory vaccination because people are no longer willing to take it, as it doesn’t offer any guarantees.
@Lucy Legacy: the ratio is completely skewed. The only data available is those getting pcr. So the data is unreliable. And is old.
@Vonvonic: you come across as though you think everyone else is inferior to your brilliant mind. Yes the ration giving the small number of unvacinated. But don’t skim over the fact that this ratio is no longer valid given omicron. And did you expect so many fully vaccinated to end up in ICU? I didn’t. I also didn’t expect it to have 100% efficacy, but here we are.
@Jacqueline berry: using very vague figures of 50% unvaccinated in ICU (it has been as high as 70%) without the vaccine there would be approximately 783 in ICU. Seeing as we have less then half that number in ICU beds that’s a lot of dead people. The vaccines are doing exactly what they are designed to do.
@Paul Clancy: of course It varies in presentage I never said it has been 50/50 the entire time. Vaccines were touted as the end to restrictions, and here we are on a booster, and we still have restrictions. so I don’t think vaccines are as effective as originally thought. They do have an effect, but I think far from the desired one.
@Emily O’Brien: nice try Emily. Reports on unvaxxed are repeatedly over 50% and they are massively disproportionately represented in ICU. This is a worldwide phenomenon.We know it’s not really about case numbers now, anyone can get it. Hospital systems crumbling are what causes lockdowns-so therefore when someone ends up in hospital and might need an ICU bed, a person who chose not to get vaxxed is taking up a bed. So yeah people being unvaxxed of course affects us all. The ignorance and selfishness of it is staggering. Especially people who come on here repeatedly saying – we’re not risk.
@Vonvonic: I feel the same about people who are overweight due to lifestyle choices, those who drink too much, smoke, engage in any high risk sport or activity, or don’t get a solid half hour of exercise a day. It’s like they don’t care about how they’re clogging up our strained healthcare service and honestly they shouldn’t be admitted into our public hospitals.
@Jacqueline berry: please tell me you can see a difference between 783 and 94, that the vaccines working. Can’t make it any simpler for you.
@Emily O’Brien: just so you know, confirmed 51% unvaxxed announced today in ICU
@Lucy Legacy: Even if you ignore for a moment the fact that 84% of the people in ICU have an underlying condition according to the HSE themselves, regardless of vaccination status, and just blindly accept your poorly thought out “clogging up the system” argument in it’s entirety, and without question.
There are currently 90 people in ICU, so 45 unvaccinated people are in ICU and yourself and people that have the same mindset, think that equals reasonable justification for mandatory forced vaccinations???
This pandemic has been a masterclass in propaganda, fear, soundbites and the misrepresentation of statistics, to manipulate peoples perceptions and limit their ability to think for themselves.
I wonder do you still retain the mental capacity to imagine yourself pre covid, accepting any of this authoritarian overreach, if 45 people was the number being used to justify this complete erosion of everybody’s personal rights?
The age of 50 is pretty random if they’re gonna go the mandatory route about things.
@Ronan Walsh: the unvaxed in the 50 and above age group tend to be the ones more likely to end up in hospital with covid, taking up beds and resources needed for all the other illnesses hospitals still have to treat.
@Ronan Walsh: Age is just a number Ronan the sooner different governments relise the better.
@Ronan Walsh: I don’t know about that. Remember February/March/April 2020 when the virus hit italy first and they were not prepared for it. 25,000 or so dead within 6 weeks, the majority elderly and still Paddy had to have his skiing trip.
@Paul Gorry: but with people who get infected with covid, age isn’t just a number. It’s also a factor in how well a body can fight off and recover from illness without the need to be hospitalised. Especially when it comes to being unvaccinated. Surely you have seen that different generations have different levels of covid related deaths?
@Ronan Walsh: what do you mean it’s random??! Sure it’s a nice round number
@Gordon Larney: above 51 is also more likely. And 52 and 53. 50 is just a random number
@Simon: but they didn’t say 50 Simon, they said 50s. So it’s not random at all. It’s a very large group of people. People that I’ve already explained above are more likely to need treatment in a hospital to beat covid. Try to keep up….;)
There’s a technical reason, most of people don’t know. The so-called ‘emergency state’ that allows the government to setup restrictive measures, cannot be prolonged for more than two years. This is by costitution. Therefore they need to set in ordinary law as much measures as possible, and this is one of the way to make sure people get vaccinated.
have your say