The Vatican Museums are now closed, including the Sistine Chapel, in yet another blow to Italy’s all-important tourism industry. Alitalia, the Italian airline which was already financially ailing before the virus, suspended all national and international flights from Milan’s Malpensa airport starting Monday.

Lombardy’s governor, who is in quarantine himself, sought to calm the public, discouraging hoarding and insisting “we’re not going to war.”

Chaos erupted in the hours before Conte signed the decree, as word leaked about the planned quarantine. Italy is up to 7,375 cases as of Saturday, and the death toll in the country rose to 366.

Students at the University of Padua in northern Italy who had been out at bars on a Saturday night saw the reports on their phones and rushed back to the train station.

In a reversal of the stereotypical north-south tensions in Italy, the governor of Puglia urged northerners to stay away and not bring virus infections down south.

“Get off at the first railway station. Don’t take planes,” Gov. Michele Emiliano said in his dramatic appeal. “Turn around in your cars, get off the pullman buses at the next stop.”

By Sunday afternoon, residents of northern Italy remained confused.

Factory worker Luca Codazzi was set to come out of a two-week quarantine at midnight Sunday _ but instead was facing new limits on his freedom.

The government decree “was badly written, there are very many interpretations,” he said. “In theory, the cordon should go down at midnight,” Codazzi said. He still doesn’t know whether his factory will be open Monday.

Governments across Europe tightened their rules. The prime minister of Portugal is self-isolating. Bulgaria banned all indoor public events. France’s president and Germany’s governing parties held emergency security meetings as the number of cases in each country surpassed 1,000.

In waters around the world, the virus outbreak has left the cruise ship industry in disarray.

The Grand Princess cruise ship, where 21 people have tested positive for the virus, was heading Sunday to Oakland after idling off San Francisco for days. It expects to land Monday. Americans will be transferred to facilities around the country for testing and isolation, but it’s not yet clear what will happen to passengers from other countries. The ship had a cluster of almost 20 infections during an earlier voyage that has led to one death.

Another cruise ship is in quarantine on the Nile in Egypt with 45 confirmed virus cases. Two other ships with no confirmed cases were turned away this weekend from Malaysia and Malta amid virus fears.

Advice to the public continues to vary. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged older adults and people with severe medical conditions to “stay home as much as possible” and avoid crowds. A federal official told The Associated Press that the White House had overruled health officials who wanted to recommend that elderly and sick Americans not fly on commercial airlines too. A spokesman for U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence denied that.

The U.S. death toll from the virus climbed to 19, with most victims in Washington state. Infections rose to over 430, including the first case in the nation’s capital.

Even as the virus spreads, dozens of research groups around the world are racing to create a vaccine.

As of Saturday, nearly 90,000 cases have been reported in Asia; more than 10,000 in Europe; about 7,000 in the Mideast; around 450 in North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, and fewer than 50 cases reported so far in Africa. More than 60,000 people have recovered worldwide.

China on Sunday reported 44 new cases over the past 24 hours, the lowest level since it began publishing nationwide figures on Jan 20, and 27 new fatalities. Italy is now the No. 2 epicentre, surpassing South Korea, whose total is now 7,313, with 50 deaths overall.

Angela Charlton reported from Paris. Nicole Winfield and Trish Thomas in Rome, Ken Moritsugu in Beijing, Yuri Kageyama in Tokyo, Chris Blake in Bangkok, Maria Sanminiatelli in New York, Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, Ashok Sharma in New Delhi, Anna Johnson in London, David Rising in Berlin and Jonathan Poet in Philadelphia contributed to this report.

-With a file from Global News

© 2020 The Canadian Press