Italy reported another 53 COVID-19 deaths over the past 24 hours, bringing the death toll since the pandemic began in the country to 34,167, the Civil Protection Department said on Thursday.

The total number of active infections has decreased to 30,637, down by 1,073 compared to Wednesday, the department said in its daily bulletin.

This came one week after the last remaining restrictions under a nationwide lockdown were lifted and Italians were once more free to travel within their own country, beginning on June 3.

Meanwhile, another 1,399 COVID-19 patients have recovered, bringing the total number of recoveries to 171,338.

The overall number of COVID-19 cases, combining infections, fatalities and recoveries, rose to 236,142 over the past 24 hours, up by 379 from Wednesday.

Call for health investments

In an impassioned speech to the Lower House on Thursday, Health Minister Roberto Speranza called for lawmakers, scientists and doctors as well as universities and the civil sector to come together to help Italy recover in the wake of the lockdown.

"A strong institutional and social synergy is the compass that will allow us to steer through this terrible storm, which we are trying to leave behind step by step," the minister said.

"We must never lose, not even for a second, the memory of... the nightmare we have lived through," he continued.

"We have a political and moral obligation to... take in the teachings of an unprecedented lesson," Speranza said, calling for reform and massive new investments in Italy's National Health Service (SSN).

"Over the past five months we have invested more (in the SSN) than we did over the past five years, but more is needed," the health minister said. "In future no one will be able to say: 'we were surprised unarmed by the violence of a new pandemic'."

"A second wave (of the pandemic) is not a certainty but it is a possibility, so we must be ready," Speranza went on.

"Recoveries are increasing, the curve of contagion is falling, many regions have zero or almost zero cases, and fatalities are decreasing -- but this encouraging data only represents one part of reality," the health minister warned lawmakers.

"We are on the right path, but the enemy has not been defeated," Speranza emphasized.

Vaccine access for all

As far as travel to and from countries outside the 26-nation Schengen Area, Speranza said that "the global epidemiological framework does not yet offer enough guarantees to justify opening our borders... on June 15."

"The data arriving from many parts of the world... point to a troubling growth of the contagion, which we cannot afford to underestimate," Speranza warned.

The minister also said that "along with my counterparts in Germany, France and the Netherlands, we have set up an alliance to spearhead action so that all European countries will be supplied with the vaccine" against the new coronavirus as soon as it is ready for use by the general public.

Speranza said he has written a joint letter with the German, French and Dutch health ministers to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urging Europe to take a leadership role in securing the vaccine, without which the pandemic cannot be defeated for good.

"Everyone must have access to the vaccine," Speranza said. "It must be considered a global public good, a right for all and not the privilege of a few."

Industrial output plunges over COVID-19

The seasonally adjusted industrial production index plunged by 19.1 percent in April compared to March, and by 23.2 percent in February-April compared to the previous three months, according to estimates by ISTAT national statistics institute out Thursday.

On a yearly basis, the industrial production index plunged by 42.5 percent in April compared to the same period in 2019, ISTAT added.

The sectors that lost most ground in April compared to last year were textiles, apparel, leather and accessories (minus 80.5 percent) and manufacturing of transportation vehicles (minus 74 percent).

"The COVID-19 containment measures caused the enforced shutdown of activities in many sectors for the entire month of April, with significant negative effects on production levels," ISTAT analysts wrote in reference to the nationwide lockdown from March 10 to May 3.

The April numbers were marginally better than those in March, when the industrial production index contracted by 28.4 percent month-on-month, ISTAT said.

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