On Thursday, August 6, a new record was reached for the numbers of migrants attempting to cross the Channel between Britain and Europe in one day. According to reports, 235 migrants were detained on Thursday after being picked up by patrols.
The governor of the northeastern Italian region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, Massimiliano Fedriga, has said that an estimated 1,000 migrants have been entering the region each month since May and that the situation has become "unmanageable."
Amid growing tensions in Italy due to an increase in migrant arrivals, the Italian government has launched a new call for tenders to find a second ship to use for quarantining migrants arriving in the country. Meanwhile Defense Minister Lorenzo Guerini has travelled to Libya to re-launch cooperation between the two countries.
Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio has announced that Italy must "forge an agreement on migratory cooperation with Tunisia" following the "Albanian model" from the late 1990s-early 2000s to control migration flows. The agreement with Albania enabled Italy to stop, seize and sink boats used for crossings.
Mayors are sounding the alarm in southern Italy: reception centers for migrants are overcrowded, and there is growing resentment in the population. Other Mediterranean states also report rising numbers of arrivals.
Tunisian President Kaies Saied and Italian Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese met on July 27 in Tunis to discuss the control of migration flows. Lamorgese expressed strong concern for an increase of arrivals from the North African country during the meeting, interior ministry sources said.
Dozens of migrants escaped a quarantine facility in Porto Empedocle in Sicily Monday, a day after nearly 200 others fled a separate holding center. Meanwhile, local mayors in southern Italy say they cannot keep up with a sharp rise in migrant arrivals.
The leader of the right-wing League party, Matteo Salvini, has attacked the government during a visit to the migrant hosting center of Lampedusa, accusing it of being an "accomplice of smugglers".
Hundreds of people continue to arrive in boats on the southern Italian island of Lampedusa. In recent days about a thousand migrants, most from Tunisia, have landed on the island.
Spanish maritime rescue and civil guard teams are continuing to search for scores of migrants reportedly trying to cross by boat to the Canary Islands from western Africa. At least 190 people are understood to have attempted the crossing in the past week.
Dozens of migrants recently escaped from reception centers and hotspots in central and southern Italy. In Umbria, 23 Tunisians escaped facilities to which they had been assigned to spend a quarantine period. They had all tested negative for COVID-19. Another 20 migrants fled a hotspot in Taranto.
Thirteen migrants who tested positive for COVID-19 in Italy and were taken amidst protests by local residents to the town of Amantea, in Calabria, have been transferred to the Celio military hospital in Rome. Meanwhile, the Italian government is still looking for a new quarantine ship to use for migrants who disembark in Italy.