3 Remuzzi A

Remuzzi G COVID-19 and Italy: what next?.

4 Government of Italy

Decree of the president of the Council of Ministers 9 March 2020.

5 Government of Italy

Decree of the president of the Council of Ministers 11 March 2020.

2 WHO

Virtual press conference on COVID-19—11 March 2020.

The outbreak has hit Europe; as of March 20, 2020, Italy has the second-largest number of confirmed cases, after China. As elegantly presented by Andrea Remuzzi and Giuseppe Remuzzi,a rapid surge of cases is posing a serious threat to the Italian national health system because of the limited capacity of intensive care unit departments. The Italian Government introduced progressive mitigation measurements on March 9 and March 11, 2020, to drastically limit social interactions and prevent virus diffusion.Projections in Remuzzi and Remuzzi's exponential model,which, according to data trends before March 8, predicted more than 30 000 cases by March 15, 2020. Real data from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University suggest a slight deviation from those predictions, with a recorded number of 24 747 cases by March 15, 2020, suggesting that measures introduced by March 11, 2020, began reducing the number of new cases within 3–4 days.