ROME - Croatia and Greece have decided to suspend school trips to Italy for one month to limit the risk of the spread of the coronavirus epidemic.



Croatian foreign minister advised citizens to avoid travel to Venice and in Lombardy, regions that have been declared "at risk for coronavirus contagion".



A group of 42 students and four teachers from a high school in Pola returned from Venice on Sunday and have been placed on home isolation and under observation for two weeks.



Albania has strengthened preventative measures following cases of coronavirus in Italy, but has decided not to impose bans on air and sea connections with Italy, despite their high frequency. On Monday alone, 17 flights are arriving at the Tirana airport from 11 Italian destinations, eight of which from the central-north.



"Our measures will be proportionate to the level of risk," said Albanian Health Minister Ogerta Manastirliu, responding to journalists' questions on a probable ban on connections with Italy.



At the time of the verification of the cases in Italy, Albanian authorities doubled controls in the only international airport in Tirana, in the ports of Durazzo and Valona, and also at the border crossings.



Passengers from Italy have been subjected to temperature checks and are required to leave their contact information with authorities.



More than 4,000 passengers were checked on Sunday.



There are currently no verified cases of coronavirus in Albania.



Six suspected cases were tested and came back negative.



Patrick Pelloux, president of the French association of emergency room doctors, in an interview with BFM-TV reflecting on a hypothetical closure of the nation's borders as suggested by MP Eric Ciotti, member of the national assembly from the Alpes-Maritimes, said that closing borders with Italy would be "totally useless". "It wouldn't be efficient," said the doctor, who has been a longtime collaborator with the French weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo, adding that "in any case, it would be a little late".



"There's also the question of whether it would have limited the contagion, which isn't certain," he said.



"I understand Ciotti's concern, but things must not be done haphazardly," Pelloux said.



"We know that in France, contrary to Italy, we paid a lot of attention to everyone who had initial symptoms," he said.



He said what is happening in Italy is "rather disturbing".



"If Italy manages to leverage confinements, managing to control the start of the epidemic, we can hope that the virus will stop around the region of Milan. If, however, Italy is overwhelmed by the epidemic, we must reflect on another scenario, with the passage of the virus into southeastern France," he said.



He said, however, that there mustn't be "fear of Italians" and that people "must have faith in the health system".



He praised the response by French authorities, who began isolating suspected cases back in January of people who had returned to France from China.



He said now is the time to prepare the "next act", which he said includes "ultra-rapid screening centres".

Egypt, Algeria, South Africa are the three African countries most at risk

ROME - Three African countries are more at risk for the novel coronavirus from China: Egypt, Algeria and South Africa, according to an international study that has analyzed flight connections between the African continent and the Chinese provinces affected by the outbreak. In other countries like Nigeria, Ethiopia, Sudan, Angola, Tanzania, Ghana and Kenya, the risk of importing the virus is inferior but fear of a quick spread is increasing.

The study, published by Lancet, was conducted by the team of Italy's Vittoria Colizza, director of research Inserm of unit 1136 of the Institute Pierre-Louis of epidemiology and public health of the Sorbonne University, in collaboration with the Free University of Brussels, the Oxford Martin Program on Pandemic Genomics and the University of California in Los Angeles. ''This work - explained Colizza - enables to alert the most exposed countries to the need to prepare for the possibility of the virus' introduction''. The researcher added that for several African countries ''with limited resources to manage the epidemic, there are significant risks not to have the organization and infrastructure to report, contain and treat the sick, which increases the risk of an epidemic in the continent''.