The Italian government moved to make masks mandatory between 18:00 and 6:00 in an effort to curb the spread of coronavirus, after recording over 600 new cases on Saturday, and almost 800 others on Sunday, nearly three times more than last week.
The country, which was the first in Europe to institute a lockdown, also closed nightclubs amid the uptick in cases.
Unlike the first coronavirus outbreak, which saw affected mostly Lombardy and other northern areas, the second wave struck much more uniformly across the country – with hundreds of local outbreaks. On Sunday, the region recording most cases was Lazio, in central Italy.
Another difference from the March-April peak of the epidemic is that the average age of those getting infected has dropped dramatically to 39.