The new centre of the global coronavirus crisis, Italy has seen some 19,899 deaths and more than 156,363 confirmed cases since the coronavirus outbreak was first reported in the country’s wealthy northern region of Lombardy on Feb. 21. The first two cases confirmed in Italy were a couple in their mid-60s from Wuhan, China, the city at the epicentre of the original outbreak of the disease. They were visiting Italy and were taken to an isolation unit at a medical centre in Rome specialising in infectious diseases and viruses. Since then 1,010,193 people have been tested for the virus in Italy. ◄ Pull

The highly infectious virus has mainly affected Italy’s northern regions, especially Lombardy. Across Italy, for every 10 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, about 4 are diagnosed in Lombardy, and for every 10 who have died from the virus, about 5 did so in the region. ◄ Pull

Antonio Pesenti, head of the Lombardy regional crisis response unit, told the Corriere della Sera newspaper on March 8 that the health system in Lombardy was “a step away from collapse” as intensive care facilities came under growing strain from the new cases: “We’ve emptied entire hospital sections to make space for seriously sick people.” The government is worried that if the current crisis worsens and spreads, the health system in the less-developed south of the country will collapse, causing deaths to spike. Overall, the coronavirus has hospitalized 31,190 people in Italy, 71,063 have been isolated at home and 34,211 have recovered from the disease so far. ◄ Pull