Italy will start reopening its manufacturing industry on May 4 as part of plans to ease its coronavirus lockdown, and schools will reopen in September, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said in a newspaper interview.
“We are working to allow the reopening of a good part of businesses from manufacturing to construction for May 4,” Conte told Italian daily La Repubblica.
He said the measures would be presented by early next week at the latest.
Italy was the first European country to be hard-hit by the novel coronavirus, and the first to impose a lockdown in March.
Its path to reopening its economy is being closely watched around the world as other countries where severe outbreaks arrived in the following week contemplate similar moves.
Deaths in Italy went over 26,000 yesterday, with 195,000 cases, but the epidemic continues to ease in the country.
(Reuters)
