ROME: Vaccines will start to have a clear impact on the spread of the coronavirus in Italy "well into spring" when 10-15 million people will have been inoculated, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said on Wednesday (Dec 30).

Italy, the first Western country to be hit hard by the pandemic, has reported more than 73,000 COVID-related deaths since discovering its outbreak late in February, the highest death toll in Europe and the fifth-highest in the world.