Italy imposed unprecedented national restrictions on its 60 million people Tuesday to control the deadly coronavirus, as China signalled major progress in its own battle against the global epidemic, reports AFP. The outbreak, combined with a crash in oil prices, has caused carnage on financial markets, erasing billions of dollars globally.
The World Health Organisation warned there is a ‘very real’ threat of a pandemic, but its chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the planet was ‘not at the mercy’ of an illness that has killed more than 4,000 people so far. China showcased growing confidence that it has brought its own outbreak under control, with president Xi Jinping on Tuesday paying his first visit to the epicentre of the crisis — Wuhan.
Xi’s unannounced trip comes as unprecedented quarantine measures that have sealed off Wuhan and the rest of Hubei province since late January appear to have paid off, with reported new infections dropping dramatically in recent weeks. Chinese authorities announced just 17 deaths on Tuesday and the lowest number of new infections — 19 — since reporting began in late January.
While Hubei’s 56 million people remain under quarantine, China is slowly easing restrictions in other parts of the country, with people returning to work and some schools reopening. China’s apparent progress stands in stark contrast to the rapid rise around the world, particularly in Italy, where more than 9,000 cases and 463 deaths have been reported.
In a desperate bid to stem the spread, Italy’s prime minister Giuseppe Conte went on television to announce the entire country would effectively be placed on lockdown from Tuesday. ‘I am going to sign a decree that can be summarised as follows: I stay at home,’ Conte said.
‘Travel must be avoided across the entire peninsula unless it is justified by professional reasons, by cases of need or for health reasons,’ he told Italians. The measures extend a quarantine zone that Italy had imposed on its industrial northern heartland around Milan and Venice on Sunday.
The national restrictions will run until April 3 and mean that schools and universities will all immediately close. Worldwide more than 110,000 cases have been recorded in over 100 countries, with Canada reporting its first death. Mongolia sealed off its capital and other cities on Tuesday after reporting its first case.
The death toll in Europe from the coronavirus topped 500 on Monday, after Italy recorded a sharp rise in fatalities. Italy’s civil protection agency reported 97 new deaths, bringing the country’s toll to 463. As of 1800 GMT, Italy had recorded more than half of all the deaths — 854 — reported outside China since the crisis first began to unfold at the end of last year, according to an AFP tally.
The number of Europeans killed by the virus now stands at 511, including 21 in France, 16 in Spain, four in Britain, three in the Netherlands, two in Switzerland and two in Germany, AFP figures show. The number of people infected in Italy rose to 9,172 — an increase of 1,797 on Sunday’s figures.
That total includes 724 people who have recovered. There are concerns that the United States could become another hotspot for the virus, with at least 26 deaths and 605 confirmed infections so far. On Monday, passengers were taken ashore from a cruise ship docked in California after at least 21 people on board were diagnosed with the virus.
Iran on Tuesday reported 54 new deaths from the novel coronavirus in the past 24 hours, the highest single-day toll since the start of the country’s outbreak. The latest deaths bring the number of those killed by the virus in the Islamic republic to 291, the health ministry’s spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour said in a televised conference.
He added that 881 new cases had been confirmed, bringing the total number of people infected to an official 8,042. But ‘2,731 people, which is about 10 times the number of dear countrymen we’ve lost, have recovered and been discharged from hospitals,’ Jahanpour said.
South Korea, one of the worst-affected countries in the coronavirus epidemic outside China, on Tuesday reported fewer than 150 new cases for the first time in two weeks. A total of 131 infections were confirmed on Monday, the Korea Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said.
Three more people died, it added, taking the death toll to 54. The rise in infections took its total to 7,513. Each morning, the South announces how many cases were diagnosed the previous day, and gives an update every afternoon with the current day’s figures so far.
Google on Monday began restricting visits to its offices in Silicon Valley, San Francisco and New York as it ramped up precautions against the deadly novel coronavirus.
Japan’s government Tuesday approved draft ‘state of emergency’ measures that would allow authorities to keep people inside and commandeer buildings for hospitals, as Tokyo steps up its fight against coronavirus five months before the Olympics.
If approved by parliament, the draft bill would give prime minister Shinzo Abe the power to declare a state of emergency and impose drastic measures but Tokyo stressed that the situation had not yet reached that point.