Coronavirus around the world: Italy locks down 16 million people after death toll soars
Italy has been thrown into chaos after announcing a sweeping coronavirus quarantine for a quarter of the country’s population.
Italy has been thrown into chaos after the Prime Minister announced a sweeping coronavirus quarantine affecting about a quarter of the country’s population in a desperate attempt to contain the outbreak.
In its most drastic move so far, Italy’s government has locked down the entire Lombardy region in the country’s north, including Milan, along with at least 15 provinces in neighbouring regions.
Entry and exit to affected areas is now forbidden, weddings and funerals banned, cinemas, gyms, pubs and museums closed. Anyone violating the new law can be arrested and fined.
There was confusing in the city of Padua as word quickly spread about the impending lockdown.
People rushed out of bars and restaurants to railway stations, many carrying suitcases and wearing gloves and masks as they pushed onto trains.
Italian virologist Roberto Burioni described the leak as “pure madness”.
“The draft of a very harsh decree is leaked, sparking panic and prompting people to try and flee the [then] theoretical red zone, carrying the virus with them,” he wrote on Twitter. “In the end, the only effect is to help the virus to spread. I’m lost for words”.
The World Health Organisation has said there are now more than 100,000 people across the globe infected with the COVID-19 strain of coronavirus.
Follia pura. Si lascia filtrare la bozza di un decreto severissimo che manda nel panico la gente che prova a scappare dalla ipotetica zona rossa, portando con sè il contagio. Alla fine l'unico effetto è quello di aiutare il virus a diffondersi. Non ho parole. pic.twitter.com/ZazcDnYFej
— Roberto Burioni (@RobertoBurioni) March 7, 2020
As of today’s reports, global number of #COVID19 confirmed cases has surpassed 100K.
— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) March 7, 2020
WHO reminds all countries & communities that the spread of this #coronavirus can be significantly slowed or even reversed through robust containment & control activities https://t.co/7jTx7fJyIw pic.twitter.com/fLxLDOtxCH
ITALY
Italy’s prime minister announced a sweeping coronavirus quarantine early Sunday, imposing restrictions on the movement of about a quarter of the country’s population in a bid to contain a widening outbreak.
Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte signed a decree after midnight that imposes restrictions to the movement of people in the region of Lombardy — which has the country’s second largest city of Milan at its centre — and in at least 15 provinces, home to more than 16 million people. The measures will be in place until April 3.
“For Lombardy and for the other northern provinces that I have listed there will be a ban for everybody to move in and out of these territories and also within the same territory,” Mr Conte said.
“Exceptions will be allowed only for proven professional needs, exceptional cases and health issues.”
Around the world, more and more countries were bracing for a big increase in virus cases. Western countries have been increasingly imitating China — where the virus first emerged late last year, and which has suffered the vast majority of infections — by imposing travel controls and shutting down public events.
After the city of Venice cancelled its cherished Carnival and governments warned citizens against travel to Italy, the epicentre of Europe’s outbreak, the country is facing a possible recession.
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Hotel occupancy rates in the lagoon city are down to 1-2 per cent.
“The surface of the Grand Canal is like glass because the boats that transport merchandise are not there. On the vaporetti (water buses), there are only five or six people,” Stefania Stea, vice president of the Venice hoteliers association, said.
Italy on Saturday saw its biggest daily increase in coronavirus cases since the outbreak began in the north of the country on February 21.
In its daily update, Italy’s civil protection agency said the number of people with the coronavirus rose by 1247 in the last 24 hours, taking the total to 5883. Another 36 people also died as a result of the virus, taking the total to 233.
The country is now one of the worst afflicted globally. Only China and Iran have had more deaths. In contrast France, the European country with the second highest number of deaths, has recorded fewer than 20 fatalities.
There was chaos and confusion in the northern Italian city of Padua in the Veneto region as word spread late Saturday evening that the government was planning to announce the quarantine.
Packed bars and restaurants quickly emptied out as many people rushed to the train station in Padua.
Travellers with suitcases, wearing face masks, gloves and carrying bottles of sanitising gel shoved their way onto trains.
Before Conte signed the quarantine decree, Stefano Bonaccini, president of the Emilia Romagna region, said parts of the decree were confusing, and he asked the premier for more time to come up with solutions that were more “coherent”.
Anyone leaving or entering Lombardy without authorisation could be fined, under the decree. The new law could see cinemas and schools closed and gatherings banned, even funerals.
JAPAN
The number of coronavirus infections in Japan increased to 1159 as of Sunday morning, according to national broadcaster NHK.
Those include 696 people from the Diamond Princess cruise ship. The death toll in Japan now stands at 14, according to NHK, seven of them from the cruise ship.
Hokkaido prefecture has the most cases at 98, followed by Aichi with 70, Tokyo with 64 and Kanagawa and Osaka with 41 cases each.
It comes after local officials in Aichi prefecture’s Gamagori City on Thursday revealed that a man in his 50s with coronavirus visited two bars “to spread the virus”.
The man lives with his parents, both of whom have the virus. After he tested positive, medical workers sent the man home at around 6pm on Wednesday, instructing him to remain there until further notice.
Instead, he decided to take a taxi to an izakaya bar, Fuji News Network reported, telling a family member before he left, “I am going to spread the virus.”
He left the first bar and walked to another pub staffed by women, where he told people, “I tested positive.” Staff members alerted authorities, but by the time police arrived dressed in protective suits, the man had taken a taxi home.
“I can’t get this straight in my head,” a staff member told the broadcaster. “I cannot express it in words since I only have anger.”
Both venues are being sterilised and staff members and customers are being tested. The man was sent to a medical institution on Thursday.
“It is highly regrettable that he did not remain home as instructed,” Gamagori mayor Toshiaki Suzuki said.
SOUTH KOREA
The number of new coronavirus cases in South Korea has risen again, albeit at a slightly lower rate than previous days, as officials called for the public to co-operate in new rationing policies for face masks.
The Korea Centres for Disease Control and Prevention reported 93 new coronavirus cases from late Saturday, for a total of 7134 in the country.
The increase in cases was lower than the same period a day before, though health officials have warned that numbers could fluctuate as more tests are processed.
South Korea has conducted one of the most ambitious coronavirus testing programs in the world, with thousands of people being tested every day.
Facing shortages of face masks, the government will on Monday impose a rationing system to limit the number of masks each person can buy each week.
On Sunday, South Korea’s Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun issued a public message, asking citizens to “actively co-operate” with the efforts to make sure healthcare workers and sick people have access to enough masks.
“Even if you feel inconvenient, I ask you to show a mature sense of civil awareness, based on concessions, consideration and co-operation so that people who really need face masks can buy them,” he said, according to Yonhap news agency.
The government has imposed export restrictions on masks and urged factories to increase production.
South Korea — which has confirmed the largest number of coronavirus cases outside of China — has also faced an increasing number of travel restrictions, with more than 100 other countries imposing at least some restrictions on arrivals from South Korea.
The issue of travel restrictions rekindled a political and economic feud between South Korea and Japan last week, as South Korea said on Friday it would suspend visas and visa waivers for Japan in response to Tokyo’s own travel restrictions on Koreans.
Extraordinary times.
— Naomi O'Leary (@NaomiOhReally) March 7, 2020
Italy's draft emergency Coronavirus law to ban entry and exit to whole of Lombardy region - capital Milan- Venice, Padua, Parma & 8 others.
Weddings and funerals banned. Cinemas, gyms, pubs, museums all closed.
Anyone violating law can be arrested and fined. pic.twitter.com/vdv9erYARJ
USA
A man in his 50s tested positive Saturday for coronavirus — the first presumptively confirmed case in the nation’s capital — and another person who travelled through the city has also tested positive in Maryland, officials said.
District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser said the man in the initial case started exhibiting symptoms of COVID-19 in late February. He was admitted to a Washington hospital on Thursday and appeared to have no history of international travel and no close contacts to any other confirmed cases across the US, Ms Bowser said.
“With his test yielding presumptive positive, DC Health has started its investigation in keeping with CDC guidelines,” Ms Bowser said. The investigation includes tracing the man’s movements, though the mayor declined to say where in Washington the man lived.
Virginia recorded its first case Saturday when a US Marine stationed at Fort Belvoir was found to have the virus.
President Donald Trump said he wasn’t concerned “at all” about the coronavirus getting closer to the White House after the first Washington case was confirmed and officials said an attendee of a recent political conference in the capital where Mr Trump himself had spoken also tested positive for the virus.
“No, I’m not concerned at all. No, I’m not. We’ve done a great job,” Mr Trump said.
Though the man in the initial Washington case had no travel history and no contact with anyone confirmed to have coronavirus, the man was tested for COVID-19 because he was considered to be at risk for complications, said Dr Anjali Talwalkar, the principal senior deputy director for the district’s health department.
The second man, who passed through Washington, is also in his 50s and lives in Nigeria, but had been staying with family members in Washington recently, officials said. He tested positive in Maryland, where he remains hospitalised, Ms Bowser said.
Meanwhile, Maryland officials warned Saturday that a person who attended the recent Conservative Political Action Conference in the suburb of Oxon Hill had tested positive.
Important Health Notification for CPAC 2020 participants and attendees. pic.twitter.com/NtahNO8st3
— ACU (@ACUConservative) March 7, 2020
Both Mr Trump and Vice President Mike Pence spoke at the conference.
The White House said Saturday there was no indication that either had met or were in “close proximity” to the infected attendee. When asked whether his campaign rallies would continue in light of the CPAC case, the President replied, “We’ll have tremendous rallies.”
It came as New York Governor Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency Saturday as the number of coronavirus cases in the city jolted upward, with 89 people now confirmed sick, including 12 in the Big Apple.
Only 10 of the state’s patients are so sick that they are currently hospitalised — the remaining 85 per cent are recovering in isolation at home, Mr Cuomo said.
New York’s spike in numbers parallels what’s happening nationwide.
Florida reported the first two deaths on the East Coast, both senior citizens who had recently travelled internationally. Those deaths brought the total toll to 19, including 16 in Washington State and one in California.
The total number of confirmed US cases climbed to 428, as testing ramped up in many states after the federal Centers for Disease Control allowed state and local labs to test locally.
Twenty-one people aboard a mammoth cruise ship off the California coast have tested positive for the new coronavirus, Mr Pence announced Friday, including 19 crew members.
Mr Pence said the federal government is working with California officials on a plan to bring the ship to a non-commercial port this weekend and the 3500 passengers and crew members will be tested for the virus.
“We will be testing everyone on the ship and quarantining as necessary,” Mr Pence said. “But with regard to the 1100-member crew, we anticipate that they will be quarantined on the ship.”
The ship was carrying 3533 people, including at least four Australians.
Another cruise ship on Egypt’s Nile River carrying 150 tourists and crew was in quarantine on Saturday in the city of Luxor after 12 people tested positive.
EGYPT
In Egypt, a river cruise ship has been placed in lockdown after it emerged a Taiwanese-American tourist, who had previously been on the same ship, tested positive when she returned to Taiwan.
Health authorities first found that a dozen of the ship’s Egyptian crew members had contracted the fast-spreading virus, and said they did not show symptoms, according to a joint statement from Egypt’s Health Ministry and the WHO on Friday.
At a news conference in Cairo later Saturday, Health Minister Hala Zayed said 33 others tested positive for the virus. Of the total 45 infected passengers and crew, 19 were foreigners, officials said. Ms Zayed did not elaborate on the nationalities of the non-Egyptians.
Officials said the 45 would be transferred to isolation in a hospital on Egypt’s north coast. The passengers – who include Americans, French and other nationalities – and the remaining crew remained quarantined on the ship awaiting further test results. The new cases brought to 48 the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Egypt, including 21 foreign nationals and 27 Egyptians.
Amonios Salah, who works as a chef on the ship, told The Associated Press that the crew received an inquiry from the Health Ministry about crew members showing flu-like symptoms.
“Some of us were sick. Some with fever,” he said.
CHINA
China has said about a quarter of newly confirmed cases and almost all of those outside the epidemic’s epicentre in Wuhan originated outside the country, according to official data.
Most of these cases, which include infections of Chinese nationals who caught the virus abroad, were in China’s northwestern Gansu province, among quarantined passengers who entered the provincial capital of Lanzhou on commercial flights from Iran between March 2 and March 5.
Currently there are more than 100,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus around the world, with 80,651 in China, 7041 in South Korea, 4747 in Iran and 4636 in Italy.
In addition to the growing risks of imported infections, China’s antivirus efforts also face the challenge of trying to get migrant workers back to work by early April.
So far, 78 million migrant workers, or 60 per cent of the total who left for the Lunar New Year holiday, have returned.
“I must stress that we’re still at a critical juncture in terms of epidemic prevention and control,” said Yang Wenzhuang, an official of China’s National Health Commission.
“The risk of contagion from increased population flows and gathering is increasing. We must not relax or lower the bar for virus control.”
Mainland China had 99 new confirmed cases of coronavirus infections on Friday, NHC said on Saturday, down from 143 cases a day earlier and marking the lowest number since January 20, when the NHC started to publish nationwide figures.
The central province of Hubei, the epicentre of the outbreak, reported 28 new deaths. In the provincial capital of Wuhan, 21 people died.
Outside of central China’s Hubei province, there were 25 new confirmed cases reported on March 6, of which 24 came from outside China.
The capital Beijing reported four new cases on Friday, of which three came from Italy, according to a notice from the Beijing health commission posted on its official Weibo account on Saturday.
The fourth was a case of a recovered patient testing positive again. There were also three cases in Shanghai that originated abroad, and one in Guangdong province on Friday, according to the National Health Commission. The total nationwide number of cases that originated outside China reached 60 as of the end of Friday.
For the second day in a row, there were no new infections in Hubei outside of the provincial capital of Wuhan, where new cases fell to the lowest level since January 25.
IRAN
An Iranian politician has died from coronavirus, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reports, in an another sign the disease is spreading within state institutions.
Iran is one of the countries outside China most affected by the epidemic. As of Friday, the country had reported 4747 infections.
The politician, 55-year-old Fatemeh Rahabar, was recently elected to serve in the incoming parliament that begins work in May.
Earlier this week, Iranian politician Abdolreza Mesri told state television that 23 members of the current parliament had the coronavirus and he urged all politicians to avoid the public.
On March 2, Tasnim reported the death of Mohammad Mirmohammadi, a member of the Expediency Council, intended to resolve disputes between parliament and the Guardian Council, a governmental body that vets electoral candidates among other duties.
Iran’s deputy health minister, Iraj Harirchi, and another member of parliament, Mahmoud Sadeghi, have also said they have contracted the virus.
— with AP and Reuters
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