This is a temperature check.
Photo: Angelo Carconi/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
After more than two months in lockdown, Italians are being allowed to venture out more this week. The nation that has seen more than 32,000 COVID-19 deaths (with many more suspected) allowed bars, churches, restaurants, and salons to reopen Monday. Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte acknowledged that easing the lockdown before contact tracing and mass testing protocols are in place is a “calculated risk.” But, he added: “We have to accept it, otherwise we will never be able to start up again.”
Italians have greeted the reopening by flocking to salons — with manicures, pedicures, and body waxing in high demand, according to one industry representative. But restaurants and many shops have not seen as much business. And some owners have calculated that reopening, even with social-distancing measures in place and a cautious population, is not worth the trouble. Here are images of what life is like in a former epicenter of the pandemic.
Hair salons in Italy are open and busy this week.
Photo: Marco Passaro/Shutterstock
A waiter measures the distance between customers at a Rome pizzeria. They are required to remain one meter apart.
Photo: Alessandro Serrano’/AGF/Shuttersock
A restaurant in Milan uses Plexiglass barriers to divide diners.
Photo: Massimo Alberico/Shutterstock
Pasta and plexiglass.
Photo: Massimo Alberico/Shutterstock/Massimo Alberico/Shutterstock
Social distancing on a gondola in newly reopened Venice.
Photo: Andrea Pattaro/AFP via Getty Images
Italy is home to 104,000 hair salons, many more than European countries of a similar size.
Photo: Alessio Coser/Getty Images
This could be a big deal, opening the door to meaningful reform
Manchin on the filibuster to @MeetThePress: “If you want to make it a little bit more painful, make him stand there and talk, I’m willing to look at any way we can. But I’m not willing to take away the involvement of the minority.”
Most job gains were in the leisure and hospitality sector, which includes restaurants
Hiring accelerated sharply in February as restaurants and other hospitality businesses reopened, adding 379,000 to U.S. payrolls and fueling renewed growth as the coronavirus pandemic eases.
U.S. employers added jobs for the second straight month in February, the Labor Department said Friday, in what marks a sharp pickup from earlier this winter.
The unemployment rate, determined by a separate survey, ticked down to 6.2% last month. The jobless rate is well down from a 14.8% peak in April 2020, but remains above pre-pandemic levels, when unemployment was near 50-year lows.
