Rome, Mar 12 (IANS): Reversing a trend of several weeks of improvement, Italy's Covid-19 situation is worsening again, the country's Health Ministry said.

This week, the transmission rate in Italy increased to 0.83 from 0.75 a week earlier. This rate, also referred to as R0, shows how many cases on average an infected person will cause during their infectious period, reports Xinhua news agency citing the Ministry as saying.

Although the R0 rate is still below 1.0 in Italy, health officials say the recent increase is significant.

The increase has prompted media speculation that the country could be heading toward a new, albeit milder wave of infections now that most health restrictions have been relaxed.

In the last 24 hours, the Ministry reported 53,127 new Covid cases. This figure is broadly in line with the previous days' reports but is higher than the recent low of just over 18,000 cases logged on February 28.

In January, the authorities reported over 200,000 new cases per day.

In the same period, the Ministry reported 156 Covid deaths.

As of Saturday, Italy's overall Covid cases and deaths stood at 13,268,459 and 156,649, respectively.