Italy Coronavirus Lockdown leaves streets deserted

Italy woke up to deserted streets in an unprecedented lockdown after the government extended quarantine measures across the entire country in a bid to slow Europe’s worst outbreak of the coronavirus. The first cases of the 2019–20 coronavirus in Italy were confirmed on 31 January 2020, when two Chinese tourists in Rome tested positive for coronavirus disease 2019, caused by SARS-CoV-2. A week later, an Italian man repatriated back to Italy from the city of Wuhan, China, was hospitalised and confirmed to be the third case of the 2019–20 coronavirus in Italy. A cluster of cases were later detected, starting with 16 confirmed cases in Lombardy on 21 February. An additional 60 cases occurred on 22 February, and Italy’s first deaths were reported on the same day.

As of 12 March, among nations with at least one million citizens, Italy has the world’s highest per capita rate of positive coronavirus cases at 206.1 cases per million people (3.6x times the rate of China) and is the country with the second-highest number of positive cases as well as of deaths in the world, after China. Eleven municipalities in northern Italy have been identified as the epicentres of the two main Italian clusters and placed under quarantine. The majority of positive cases in the other regions lead back to these two clusters. By 10 March, Italy had performed 60,761 tests for the virus.

On 8 March 2020, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte extended the quarantine to all of Lombardy and 14 other northern provinces, and on the following day to all of Italy, putting more than 60 million people in quarantine. On 11 March 2020, Conte ordered stoppage of nearly all commercial activity except supermarkets and pharmacies. As of 11 March 2020, there have been 12,462 confirmed cases, 827 deaths, and 1,045 recoveries in Italy, leaving 11,417 active cases.