Coronavirus: Italy Imposes Quarantine On 16 Million People

The government of Italy has imposed a lockdown on its northern region, restricting the movement of more than 16 million people, as it fights to control the coronavirus outbreak there.

The lockdown affects the entire Lombardy region, along with its capital Milan, as well as the city of Venice. The area includes about a quarter of Italy’s population.

The Italian Civil Protection Agency reported a total of 5,883 COVID-19 cases as of Saturday evening, with 233 deaths from the illness.

Italy’s action followed another day of increasing cases of the coronavirus in the United States, including the first confirmed case in the nation’s capital.

To this point, the West Coast has borne the brunt of coronavirus in the U.S., with the bulk of confirmed cases so far reported in California and Washington state. But that’s likely to change soon, with reports of cases now in Florida, New York and the Washington, D.C., area.

On Friday, health authorities in Florida said two COVID-19 patients in the state have died, in what are believed to be the first deaths linked to the disease on the East Coast. One of the patients lived in the district of Rep. Matt Gaetz, who drew criticism from colleagues earlier this week for “making light” of coronavirus when he wore a massive gas mask to a House floor vote on measures to combat the epidemic.

“Our prayers are with his family and loved ones during this difficult time,” the Republican congressman tweeted late Friday, adding: “I’m confident our community will continue to remain vigilant in combating this disease and pray there will be no further contractions of the virus in Northwest Florida.”

The state has confirmed more than a dozen cases so far — the largest cluster on the East Coast outside of New York, which has reported several dozen cases of its own. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency Saturday, after officials learned of new cases in New York City and Westchester County.

“We are aggressively testing, following up leads, because we want to find as many people who test positive so we can get them out of circulation,” Cuomo said at a media briefing midday Saturday.

Elsewhere on the East Coast, Washington, D.C., confirmed a “presumptive case” of the virus in a man in his 50s with no history of international travel, Mayor Muriel Bowser said Saturday evening. The city also said it was looking into the case of one person who spent time in D.C. and tested positive later in Maryland. That came roughly an hour after the Pentagon confirmed a U.S. Marine at Fort Belvoir, just outside Washington in northern Virginia, tested positive for the coronavirus after returning from overseas.

Off the coast of California, thousands of passengers were confined to the Grand Princess cruise ship near San Francisco after 21 people aboard tested positive for the virus. On Saturday, Vice President Pence said the government was tracking an additional cruise ship that may have shared crew members with the Grand Princess or the Diamond Princess, another ship that faced quarantine in Japan in February after passengers tested positive.

All told, the number of confirmed cases in the U.S. is well over 300 — 19 of whom have died, mostly in Washington state. At least 14 people who died were associated with one nursing home near Seattle, according to the public health department of Seattle and King County. Health authorities in Washington say they have confirmed 102 cases of the coronavirus in the state.

As of late Saturday afternoon, the total tally of confirmed cases worldwide stood at more than 105,000, some 3,500 of whom have died from the disease.

The vast majority of those cases have been reported in Hubei province in mainland China, the outbreak’s epicenter, but the number of new cases there has been declining lately — while the virus has taken root in South Korea, Iran and Italy and has reached dozens of countries.

Back in the U.S., schools and companies have announced a spate of measures to mitigate spread of the virus. Stanford University in California and the University of Washington and Seattle University, which boast tens of thousands of students among them, said Friday they are canceling in-person classes through the end of their respective quarters later this month.

And Amtrak, on the East Coast, said that because it is “experiencing some reduced demand,” it plans to halt its nonstop Acela train service between New York and Washington, D.C., beginning Tuesday and continuing through late May.

Texas has reported just a half-dozen confirmed cases, none of which have been found in Austin — but that fact did not dissuade the city’s mayor, Steve Adler, from preemptively canceling South by Southwest, the city’s signature music, film and technology event.

“We have no reported cases in Austin, but certainly the longer we can stay that way, the better off we are. It’s inevitable that it’s coming here as to all other cities, but delay is better,” Adler told NPR’s Weekend Edition on Saturday.

The event drew more than 400,000 visitors to the city last year. Adler acknowledged that its cancellation this year, just a week before its scheduled opening, is “very tough and truly heartbreaking” for the performers and vendors who had been depending on the business the event customarily brings.

“We’re going to have to mitigate that as best we can as a community, be as resilient as we can,” he said. “We just ultimately didn’t have a choice because the focus needed to be on doing what was necessary to best keep the city safe.”

Eyes are also trained on another signature event expected later this month: March Madness. So far, the NCAA has made no major changes to the massively popular (and lucrative) men’s basketball tournament that begins in earnest March 19.

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