Coronavirus Outbreak spooks Europe
Italy has clamped down on major public gatherings including the Venice Carnival, Milan’s La Scala opera, Fashion Week in Milan and premier soccer matches, as it tries to check the spread of Europe’s first major outbreak of the coronavirus.
The number of Covid-19 cases has soared to 152 in Italy, with three deaths.
The decision to call off the remaining days of the Venice Carnival was announced by Veneto regional Governor Luca Zaia.The carnival and Fashion Week, two iconic events which draw hundreds of thousands of visitors to the northern Italian cities, were disrupted by an outbreak of the virus in surrounding regions.
As virus fears spread in Europe, Austria temporarily halted trains from Italy at the Brenner Pass in the Alps after suspicion that a train en route from Venice had two passengers possibly infected with the virus on board.
However, just before midnight Austria’s Federal Railways announced the ban had been lifted, after the two passengers tested negative.
The two-week Venice Carnival had been due to end mid-week.
In Milan, Giorgio Armani decided to unveil his new women’s collection behind closed doors and offered a livestream instead ‘‘to support national efforts to safeguard public health’’. Luisa Spagnoli’s show also went behind closed doors.
Italian authorities imposed a lockdown on Saturday and banned travel to and from an area of about 50,000 people near Milan. Authorities applied new restrictions in the two cities after cases surged overnight in the regions of Lombardy and Veneto, with two infections confirmed in the city of Venice.
Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte announced the travel ban and other emergency steps after the jump in cases linked to a hospital in the town of Codogno in Lombardy, where Milan is located. A man who sought treatment there last week is believed to have infected dozens of patients and medical staff who then carried the virus further afield.
Conte said Italy won’t seek a suspension of the Schengen agreement, which has eliminated border controls among 26 European countries.
Even so, the surge in the virus illustrates the potential threat to borderless travel and commerce in Europe – a hallmark of the continent that last came under pressure during the refugee crisis in 2015-16.
Italy asked other major economies to ‘‘work immediately on economic measures at an international level that are coordinated and sufficient to deal with the economic consequences of the virus in a timely and effective way in case the crisis worsens,’’ Finance Minister Roberto Gualtieri said on the sidelines of a Group of 20 meeting in Riyadh.