As the month of September comes closer and closer, the organizers of the Venice Film Festival continue to stand by the original dates that they announced earlier this year. This despite the global coronavirus pandemic continuing to rage around the world.

According to Variety, Veneto governor Luca Zaia has announced that the Sept. 2 to 12 dates of the Venice Film Festival still stand, despite the moving of the Biennale of Architecture to 2021. The clarification had to be made since the Biennale of Architecture often overlaps with the Venice Film Festival.

Zaia says the reason the Biennale of Architecture was moved was that they encountered problems with constructing the pavilions necessary for the event. No such problems were encountered with the preparations for the Venice Film Festival, although he did caution that there may be fewer films participating this year.

Organizers have already revealed previously that they have been running simulations of what the festival would look like should it push through in a world experiencing a pandemic. Foreign press participants are expected to be helped out with digital technology. Organizers are also optimistic that the Italian government would allow the use of six or seven cinemas as opposed to thousands of screens throughout the country.

Deadline also brings up the possible collaboration between the Cannes Film Festival and the Venice Film Festival, as the first festival has had to seek out alternatives after it was forced to cancel its staging of their own festival.

As the publication points out, Italy is now working towards reopening its borders to the rest of the European Union, with June 3 as the target date. The government also plans to have social distancing measures in place in cinemas as they are going to reopen on June 15.

Italy was the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in Europe, with confirmed COVID-19 cases rising as high as 230,000 people. The number of deaths in Italy caused by COVID-19 is at 32,785 people.

Globally, the May 24 situation report from the World Health Organization puts the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases at 5,204,508 people, with new cases making up 101,502 of those cases. Deaths caused by COVID-19 worldwide is at 337,687 people, with  4,286 of that total being new deaths.

In the same World Health Organization situation report, the European region logs a total number of 2,006,984 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with 19,327 of those being new cases. Europe is only second to the American region in the number of confirmed cases. There are now 173,886 people that have died from COVID-19 in Europe.