Italian government issues' restart decree '
The Italian government on Thursday issued a 55 billion euro "reset order" to help businesses, individuals and society cope with the impact of the covid-19 outbreak.
Under the decree, the Italian government will spend 25.6 billion euros to subsidize workers whose incomes are affected by the outbreak, about 5 billion euros to subsidize small and medium-sized enterprises, 3.25 billion euros to strengthen the country's health care system and 2.8 billion euros for education and research systems.
Under the decree, the government will subsidise 60 per cent of the rents paid to businesses in the past three months and suspend the levy of about €4bn on businesses with annual turnover of less than €250m. The government will also allocate a portion of the money to help companies take necessary precautions after the closure is lifted.
The decree also provides for a six-month work permit for migrants working in Italy's agriculture and domestic service sectors to address Labour shortages in some sectors.
To ease the impact of the outbreak, the government has already provided 25 billion euros in emergency funds and 750 billion euros in loan guarantees to companies.
In addition, 888 new covid-19 cases were confirmed in Italy that day, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 222,104, according to data released by the ministry of civil protection on July 13. There were 195 new deaths, with a total of 31,106 deaths. There were 3502 new cured cases, with a total of 112,541 cured cases.
Of the existing patients, 65,392 were quarantined at home, 12,172 received general treatment in hospitals and 893 were treated in intensive care units, the data showed. There were 693 fewer general hospitalizations and 59 fewer severe cases than the previous day, respectively.
Italy implemented a six-month state of emergency from January 31 to deal with the epidemic, and entered a state of "lockdown" from March 10 to May 3. From May 4, the country entered the "second phase" of fighting the epidemic and economic recovery.
