Italy to start easing coronavirus lockdown from May 4 - PM Conte

Italy will announce before the end of this week its plans for the gradual reopening from a lockdown imposed to fight the coronavirus emergency that will be applied starting from May 4, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said on Tuesday.

"I wish I could say: let's reopen everything. Immediately. We start tomorrow morning ... But such a decision would be irresponsible. It would make the contagion curve go up in an uncontrolled way and would nullify all the efforts we have made so far," Conte wrote in a Facebook post.

"We must act on the basis of a national (reopening) plan, which however takes into account the territorial peculiarities."