Among the stores permitted to reopen are book shops, laundries, stationery shops and clothing stores for babies and children. However, some regions have decided to delay lifting restrictions.
The measures will be in place until May 3, according to the government decree.
The government has also expanded the list of permitted production activities to allow some forestry, landscape care and maintenance and hydraulic works to resume. Computer manufacturers and wholesalers of paper and cardboard products can restart production.
These openings are in effect a preview of the larger scale openings expected to take place during “Phase 2” of Italy's three-phase plan to bring the country back to normal.
Phase 2 will only start sometime after other lockdown measures are lifted, at some point after May 3.
This week's easing of the lockdown “is not phase 2”, Gianni Rezza, Director of Infectious Diseases at the National Health Institute (ISS), said in a press briefing Monday evening.
The death rate and the epidemic curve in Italy show “positive signals that need to be consolidated in time,” he said.
In Lombardy and Veneto, the regions hardest hit by the pandemic, book stores and stationery shops are not allowed to reopen.
In Lazio, the region including Rome, book stores will be allowed to open from April 20 “to give time to the owners to organize security measures,” such as guaranteeing minimum distances between people, providing disposable gloves at shop entrances and promoting the sanitation of the premises.
The new decree says anywhere that reopens to the public must respect the rules, for example making hand sanitizer available, enforcing the use of masks in enclosed spaces, and in areas where distancing cannot be guaranteed, and the use of disposable gloves in the purchase of food and drink.
Access to shops will be staggered to ensure the social distancing of customers.