Covid-19: Italy extends no-curfew rules across the country

Italy will become entirely curfew-free as the last region where nightime restrictions still apply will lift them on Monday, Health Minister Roberto Speranza said.

The small French-speaking mountain region of Valle d'Aosta, in the northwest, will become a "white" zone like the rest of country from June 28, Speranza said in a Friday statement.

On that same date face masks will no longer be mandatory outdoors, except in crowded areas -- as announced by the government earlier this week.

The change for Valle d'Aosta means an end to the curfew from midnight to 5 am, and to the limit of four, plus accompanying minors, for people paying home visits to friends or relatives.

"With the decree I just signed, all of Italy will be white starting Monday. It is an encouraging result, but we still need caution and prudence," Speranza wrote on Facebook.

Pointing to the spread of more transmissible variants of the coronavirus, the minister said: "the battle has not yet been won."

Italy has been one of the countries worst affected by the pandemic, with more than 4.25 million cases and 127,418 deaths, including 56 reported in the last 24 hours.

But with the rollout of vaccinations and the onset of warmer summer weather, pandemic statistics have significantly improved recently.

Week-on-week, new cases fell by 36 percent and fatalities by more than 46 percent in the June 16-22 period, the Gimbe health think tank said.

At the same time, health authorities reported Friday that the prevalence of the highly-contagious Delta variant had risen to 16.8 percent as of June 21, from 4.2 percent in May.