ROME — Italy on Monday became the first European country to announce severe nationwide limits on travel as the government struggled to stem the spread of a coronavirus outbreak that has hobbled the economy, threatened to overwhelm public health care and killed more people than anywhere outside China.

The measures, announced in a prime time news conference by the country’s prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, sought to adopt the kind of drastic limits that may be working to control the virus in China, an authoritarian regime.

But the scope of the clampdown in Italy, applied to roughly 60 million people — from islands in the south to the Alps in the north — immediately raised the question of whether an entire modern European nation protective of its individual freedoms would make the necessary sacrifices.

The broader restrictions came just hours after the authorities announced that 9,172 people had been infected by the virus, 1,598 more than the day before. Deaths climbed to 463 people, the majority of whom are overwhelmingly elderly and sick people. There were 97 more deaths since Sunday.