Italy’s coronavirus epidemic already the second most deadly after China has taken another dramatic turn with more than 60 million people the country’s entire population under lockdown from Tuesday.

GIUSEPPE CONTE SAID:

(PRIME MINISTER OF ITALY)

He’s extending restrictions on movement after another spike in deaths from the coronavirus all public gatherings are banned and schools and universities closed until April the third.

There will no longer be a red zone they will no longer be a zone 1 and zone 2 in the country there will only be Italy a protected zone so across the whole Peninsula people should avoid all movement unless they are for three specific reasons for work emergencies or health reasons.

16 million people in the north of the country have been under lockdown since Sunday riots in two dozen prisons across Italy followed restrictions on face-to-face visits in modernist six inmates died after they broke into the prison infirmary and overdosed on stocks of the heroin substitute methadone.

As a warning, they posted some posters which say we can only go inside wearing a mask they’re only allowing visits of one family member at a time.

This was a hint of what chaos might ensue if the virus were to enter the confines of the prison system it is almost everywhere else in Italy these were rare scenes filmed inside a hospital in the northern town of Cremona and also on lockdown the financial capital Milan one of the engines of the economy Europe’s major stock markets from Milan to Frankfurt Paris and London all suffered dramatic Falls on Monday. with share prices plummeting as the infection rate soars the economic impact of the coronavirus is Already substantial and will only grow there our discomforting comparisons being made to the 2008 financial crisis with concerns for the preparedness of European banks and businesses on Tuesday EU leaders will meet to try to come up with a unified response but they won’t meet her in person in Brussels with its steadily growing infection rate instead they’ll be holding a teleconference the circumstances of this unique crisis continue to evolve although not yet into a pandemic says the World Health Organization in which transmission of the virus is uncontrolled.

Now that the virus has a foothold in so many countries the threat of a pandemic has become very real but it would be the first pandemic in history that could be controlled.

There are signs of success against the virus in China South Korea and Singapore but not yet in Europe, Spain looks set to launch what’s being described as shock therapy measures possibly following France and Germany with school closures and restricted public gatherings these are moves the government in Britain is not yet prepared to make keen apparently to defer the enormous social and economic costs of fighting the coronavirus but there will likely be no avoiding them.

Ilaria Kapoor is a virologist at the University of Florida and a former Italian politician she says Italy has one of the world’s biggest aging populations making it more vulnerable to this outbreak.

Ilaria Kapoor University of Florida

She Says: I think that the system of reporting that is used in Italy is very very different from systems that are being used in other countries I think that it is likely that infection from Asia did not reach Italy only but it reached a series of European countries and that there have been intro European circulation of the virus and Italy is one of the countries infected by the coronavirus. it certainly has had a significant number of hospitalized patients but Italy has a significant aging population. we are one of the old countries with the longest life expectancy plus the public service we’ll take on any case and therefore. I think that this is quite a unique situation compared to the rest of the world. I don’t think that the virus when it left before the Wuhan lockdown went only to Italy. There are as I said many many connections in Europe with China but also in Africa with China and so I suspect that the infection might be more widespread than what is it is currently believed to be.

CORONAVIRUS

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