Piazza San Marco is the most popular destination for tourists in Venice but has been eerily quiet after coronavirus appeared in Italy. Credit:Bloomberg

Venice is no stranger to disruption; every now and then a high tide sweeps across its 118 tiny islands, causing tourists to briefly flee. But nothing has hit quite so hard and quite so quick as coronavirus.

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Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size In St Mark's Square - the heart of Venice and backdrop to tens of millions of 'selfies' each year - hundreds of tables sit empty, their white linen cloths flapping against a gentle breeze. Waiters don't even bother laying out cutlery and napkins: they know the tourists aren't coming. A sign outside the piazza's basilica and bell tower explains the landmarks are shut for "reasons of public security". On the nearby canals, gondoliers wait for hours before someone asks for a ride. Caffe Florian, the world's oldest coffee shop, is close to deserted. Harry's Bar, where the Bellini was invented, is not faring much better. Shop owners are sending staff home. Hotels are fielding cancellations. And when trains pull into the city's central station, only a couple of dozen passengers get off to explore what is normally one of the world's most-visited cities. Venice is no stranger to disruption; every now and then a high tide sweeps across its 118 tiny islands, causing tourists to briefly flee. But nothing has hit quite so hard and so quick as coronavirus. "The tourists ... they got scared and just left overnight," says gondola operator Stefano Ricci. "Normally we see the floods coming but we didn't see this coming. We can't see the virus but look around ... you can see what it has done to us." Of Italy's 650 confirmed cases as of Friday, about 111 are in the Veneto region to the country's north-east, of which Venice is the capital. The outbreak flared last weekend, taking local authorities and the World Health Organisation (WHO) by surprise. The country had just three cases a week ago. For the time being, no other country is blocking inbound flights from Italy. Trains are still running and borders still open. Most people in Venice aren't even wearing masks. Britain is advising citizens who have been to the worst-affected areas of Italy's north to self-quarantine for two weeks when they return and the Australian government's formal travel advice may be updated to reflect the same should the number of infections grow.


Despite calls for calm and perspective, there are growing fears that Europe and the rest of the world is on the cusp of a pandemic, endangering lives and triggering the worst blow to the global economy since the financial crisis of 2008. Italy now has the largest coronavirus cluster outside Asia and fresh cases are emerging daily in neighbouring Austria, Switzerland and France, as well as nearby Greece, Croatia and Germany. The number of cases globally reached 82,593 as of Friday morning Australian time. More than 2800 people have died. A Russian tourist dons a carnival mask and protective mask for Carnival. The event was cancelled two days before it was due to finish. Credit:AP Italy's effort to contain the spread and find patient zero - the person responsible for bringing coronavirus to the country - has been mixed. The government closed schools, museums, churches and government offices in Venice and Milan. The final two days of Venice's world-famous Carnival were cancelled. Nearly 50,000 people in a dozen towns in the wealthy Lombardy region have been largely sealed off in a "red zone". Catholic authorities in Sicily have even told priests to avoid putting communion wafers directly onto the tongues of worshippers. And yet the number of infected Italians keeps rising. As of Friday, 17 people have also died. This week the number of new cases outside China exceeded the number inside China for the first time since the emergency began in Hubei province in early January. WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has described it as a "decisive point" but is urging against panic.


"This is not a time for fear," he says. "Fear and panic doesn't help." Prime Minister Scott Morrison has flagged a stimulus package for the Australian tourism sector amid warnings the outbreak could deliver a $6 billion hit to the economy. However during a media blitz on Friday, he said Australia could not close its borders should coronavirus become a global pandemic. "That's not realistic, that's not practical. What you do then is manage it and slow it down." Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video The World Travel and Tourism Council estimates the global tourism industry was worth $8.8 trillion in 2018, linked to 319 million jobs and responsible for one in five of all new jobs created in the world over the previous five years. In a sign of the damage to come unless coronavirus is arrested, airline shares - particularly those of European carriers - plummeted this week as investors grew nervous the outbreak will cause flights to be wound back and some countries deemed off-limits. The Dow Jones also recorded its worst one-day points drop in history on Friday. The outbreak has inflicted a devastating blow on Venice, where the term "quarantine" was first coined during the 14th century after local authorities forced arriving ships to anchor offshore for 40 days (quaranta giorni) to protect against the bubonic plague. The slightly terrifying mask of the Medico della Peste (Plague Doctor) is one of the Venice Carnival's most popular costumes. The white, beak-shaped mask was worn by medics in the 17th century and filled with herbs and spices to ward off airborne nasties.


One bakery owner estimated trade had plummeted 75 per cent since the coronavirus outbreak took off a week ago. Never had the streets been so quiet, she explained, before tears welled in her eyes and she disappeared into the kitchen. Tourism bookings fell in the wake of November's floods. Credit:AP From his office overlooking the Grand Canal, Venice's deputy mayor for social welfare and economic development, Simone Venturini, says tourism was down 40 per cent in the final three months of 2019 due to the fallout from the November floods and will sink another 30 to 40 per cent this quarter thanks to the virus. "We think that in a few weeks the virus will be a distant memory like SARS or other viruses that have come in the past 15 years and made us talk a lot and were then defeated," Venturini says. "The problem is that the economic problems we are experiencing now will last a long time. Tourism is about reputation and perception. Tourists book holidays where they feel safe and where the place has a good reputation. "The problem was not that the floods made the city inaccessible - the next day the city all worked. It was the images. We seemed to be New Orleans after [Hurricane] Katrina in the sense that there was an impression that the city was unreachable and no one could come, which was not true." Venturini says some hotels were reporting that 20 per cent of bookings had cancelled this week but others were registering a much higher figure.


"The problems is not so much the cancellations but the lack of bookings. With Easter, Italians come on holiday. Then we have the Biennale in May and then we have summer, so there are lots of dates coming up and we are worried not just for the hoteliers but also the shops, restaurants, cleaning workers ... the whole chain," he says. "We are asking the government to make a plan not just for the health issue but for the economic one." But some residents say the sudden mass exodus is proof the city is too reliant on tourism and the economy needs to diversify so that shocks like COVID-19 or the floods that damaged its fragile buildings and bridges last November are less severe. The number of tourists who visit each year has never been officially recorded, but reputable estimates are something in the magnitude of 30 million versus a permanent population of about 50,000. Of those tourists, more than 20 million only visit for the day. Many come on gigantic cruise ships that tower over historic buildings and have permanently altered tidal flows in the lagoon surrounding the city. "All of what you are seeing now wouldn't have happened if Venice was a living city," says Jane da Mosto, an environmental scientist and founder of We Are Here Venice, a think tank and conservation group that works to keep Venice a living city. "Who, who is going to respond to this wake-up call? Who is going to listen to us? "This is a moment for reflection but unfortunately there's nothing for the light to shine on. We've got a black hole of a governance framework where the people running Venice aren't from Venice. They are running it like a business.

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