ROME: Hair and beauty salons will reopen from Monday in Rome, two weeks earlier than first planned under Italian government proposals to end the two-month national coronavirus lockdown.
COVID-19 infections have fallen steadily in the past two weeks, dropping sharply in Italy’s central and southern regions, where restrictions have been eased.
However, in Lombardy, the wealthy northern region where the infection first sparked in Europe, more cases are being recorded. Lombardy has the country’s highest death toll (29,956), followed by its neighbors Piedmont (11,891), Emilia-Romagna (6,301) and the Veneto region (4,718).
In the rest of Italy’s 20 regions, the toll ranges from 4,096 in central Lazio, where Rome is located, to 80 cases in the northern Valle d’Aosta region in the Alps.
However, epidemiologists and medical experts in the health ministry believe the overall situation is now under control.
Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte is due to announce at the weekend that further restrictions will be relaxed in the coming week. Government sources say that travel will be allowed nationwide from the beginning of June unless a second wave of infections is recorded. In that case affected areas will be sealed off, but only on a local basis.
Rome will accelerate the lockdown easing by allowing barber shops and beauty salons to open from Monday.
“The new order signed by Mayor Virginia Raggi will be in force from May 18 to June 21, 2020 and sets out the opening hours for commercial, artisanal and productive activities,” a Rome city hall statement said.
City authorities have introduced a system based on three activity groups, with staggered opening and closing times to limit the number of people gathering in one place.
The first comprises food sellers, the second artisans, while the third allows hair and beauty salons as well as stores such as shoe and fashion boutiques to open from next Monday.
Meanwhile, some bars and restaurants also will be able to reopen from Monday, although lockdown orders remain in place in Lombardy and Piedmont.
Romans responded to the easing of restrictions enthusiastically.
“Finally, I can go and get a haircut, I feel like a neanderthal man,” said Giuseppe while he waited for a bus to go to work.
“My hair has never been so long.”
Giuseppe shares the same problem with TV presenters and broadcast journalists, who appear on screens with long hair.
Italian President Sergio Mattarella also appeared on TV with long white hair. “I could not go to the barber shop, either,” he said in a televised message broadcast a few days before the end of the national lockdown.
Italian women are also happy to go back to their beloved salon.
“I have been feeling so ugly and untidy with all this hair. I cannot stand it anymore. And look at my hands, too — they are a mess,” said Mariella, an elegantly dressed corporate lawyer.
Three weeks ago she booked an appointment for June 2 with her hairdresser in the well-heeled Parioli neighborhood. “Now I am going to call them straight away to ask to have my treatment as soon as possible. I cannot wait.”
Shopkeepers have returned to their businesses to clean and put goods back in order. Most are arranging display windows and unpacking summer collection clothes which have been kept in boxes for weeks after delivery.
“Once our customers come back to buy from us again, we want them to find our stores as beautiful as before the lockdown. That is why we are polishing with extra care and sanitising everything,” Riccardo, a clothing shop clerk in central Rome, told Arab News.
“At the beginning it will not be easy to comply with all the hygiene restrictions. But we will do our best. Our shops will reopen for the city, for the nation. Somehow we will manage to get by,” he said.
Later he fixed a large sign to his shop window that read: “Welcome back, we were waiting for you.”
Municipal leaders around Italy are encouraging shops to open, even those struggling to cover their expenses.
Giuseppe Sala, mayor of Milan, said: “I hope it can be an almost normal summer. I really hope that by respecting the rules we can continue to reduce the infection rate and return to normal life.”
Giorgio Gori, mayor of Bergamo, told Arab News: “The worst of the health crisis may be past. The new challenge of rebuilding is just beginning.”
However, with more than 12,000 cases still being treated in the province, the outbreak is far from over.
But compared with March and April, “between that moment and now, there has been an enormous change. Now we can think of the future,” he said.
