ROME – The new commissioner for Italy’s fight against Covid-19, Francesco Paolo Figliuolo, has begun tenure with the aim to turn all the current drive through testing centres into vaccination centres, as reports Il Messaggero.

  This comes as part of the government’s commitment to administering administering 12 million doses by the end of March, and over 500,000 a day throughout April. Helping with this goal are 300,000 volunteers and 1,700 members of the armed forces, though this number is increasing as they government aim to use more of the army’s resources.

  There are currently 200 drive through test centres throughout the country - all of which are set to be converted into drive-through vaccination centres – with 148 other drive-through centres already administering vaccinations.

  However there is a huge disparity between the best prepared areas. In Lombardy there are 27 vaccinations centres and in Lazio 20, while Calabria only has one. New drive through centres are set to be introduced in areas further behind in the vaccination campaign, mainly in the South.

  Figliuolo on Tuesday met with the new head of the Department of Civil Protection, Fabrizio Curcio, Roberto Speranza, the Minister for Health, and Mariastella Gelmini, the Minister of Regional Affairs and Autonomies, to discuss this disparity between the North and South and to address the setbacks to the national vaccination campaign. There is also set to be a Conference of the Regions on Thursday.

  Figluolo also met with the outgoing commissioner, Domenico Arcuri, for an exchange of information regarding the campaign.

  On a regional level, there are still severe setbacks in the administration of the vaccine. Il Messaggero reports that Basilicata have so far not administered any of the doses of the AstraZeneca delivered to them, and Molise and Marche have both administered less than one per cent of doses.

  In the whole of Italy, only 360,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine have been administered, out of the 1,512,000 delivered to the country. So far 4.5 million Italians have received at least one dose, in comparison to 20 million in the UK and 79 million in the US.

  Monday saw 17,000 new cases and 343 new deaths from Covid-19. In total there are 430,000 currently infected in the country, with Lombardy, Campania, Emilia-Romagna and Piedmont currently being the hotspots.

ol