Italy to ease COVID-19 lockdown from May 4

Italy is expected to gradually ease its lockdown restrictions from May 4, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said on Tuesday.

Italy was put under lockdown in early March due the coronavirus pandemic. The current measures are due to expire on May 3.

"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 said in a Facebook post. 

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

So far, Italy has reported 181,228 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 24,114 deaths.