One thing everyone agrees on is that Italy acted far too late on COVID-19.

Waiting until it had nearly 10,000 infections before it went from walling off a red zone to national lockdown.

Now we're going from lockdown to #Fase2, but we had 10,000 new cases in the past 5 days.

The lockdown has been tight - at least here in the city. Much much tighter than I hear from friends in the UK or US.

But yet 2000+ people a day are reported newly infected. I'd love to know if there's some reason to hope that won't go up if there's a cautious reopening.

Maybe some other parts of the response are going to help. Impressive distribution of masks to all households. 4m serological tests promised in May. The contract tracing app (though I am hugely sceptical that will work and be used). But I still struggle to see a path from here.

The government seems to be re-opening primarily because people can't take it being inside anymore.

Which is not something to dismiss. Especially for those like the young student next door who will have been on their own for nearly two months.

But the virus is still smouldering