The African anticyclone, renamed Charon, has reached its peak and should now ease its grip on Italy: in fact, thunderstorms are expected in the North over the weekend and the cities marked with the red alert dot hot of the Ministry of Health will decrease from 23pm today to 18pm tomorrow and Friday.
The South, however, will still see record temperatures in the coming days and hospitals, to avoid overcrowding in emergency rooms, are focusing on telemedicine and home care for those most at risk.
The Ministry of Health's public utility number 1500 is also active from today to get information on how to behave to protect yourself from the heat and indications on the social and health services present in the country. 1500 will be active every day from 8 to 20.
Hospitals are also taking action: monitoring fragile patients at home and keeping all communication channels open with citizens, from traditional toll-free numbers to social networks, to prevent cardiac, respiratory or metabolic failures whose complications could make hospitalization necessary, is the strategy implemented by the Italian Federation of Health and Hospital Companies Fiaso to avoid an overflow in the Emergency Departments.
Meanwhile, temperatures today also reached record levels in many places and Rome and Rieti were the Italian cities with the most red dots from the beginning of the summer until today: they counted 10 each, 11 with those forecast for tomorrow.
And if at 118 in Naples there are about 3 thousand requests for assistance per day, the consequences of the heatwave have caused two deaths today: a worker died following an illness that struck him on the construction site for the construction of the Amazon logistics hub in Vallesina, in the province of Ancona.
It is a crane operator and among the hypotheses also that the illness is linked to the heat. The second death is that of a 62-year-old truck driver found dead on board his truck. Even in this case, it is not excluded that the heat contributed to the fatal illness. A similar case also occurred yesterday.
Precisely to prevent similar episodes, the red dots of the heat alert for the health of workers arrive. A classification based on geographical areas, of three days in three days, where you can go to see the hours to avoid by type of work, from the heaviest to the lightest, by clicking on the site www.worklimate.it.
In short, a situation still of alert, even if the weather forecast indicates a slight improvement but with an Italy divided in two. At least for the moment. Starting tomorrow, explains Bernardo Gozzini, director of the Cnr Environmental Monitoring and Modeling Laboratory (Lamma-Cnr), "there will be a change in weather conditions starting from the Center-North, where temperatures will begin to drop, even if only by 1-2 degrees.
In the South, however, there will still be very high temperatures for the next few days, even 40 degrees, especially in Sicily, Puglia and Sardinia. A drop in temperatures in the South will in fact begin to be recorded only towards the end of the month, around July 25-26”.
This is because, the expert clarifies, "in the South the mass of hot air of African origin will remain, while in the North the effects of cooler currents coming from the Atlantic will begin to be felt".
According to the website www.iLMeteo.it., the anticyclone will soon reach its peak strength at a national level, after which it will begin to weaken in the North with a consequent drop in temperatures that will involve at least half of Italy. Strong thunderstorms will therefore affect Northern Italy starting today, while in the Center-South a new flare-up is expected with peaks of 39-41 degrees in many cities.
Article published on 19 July 2023 - 21:30
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