Italian authorities scrambling to control the coronavirus imposed a lock-down on “hot spot’’ stricken tourist cities in the north Sunday — including Venice, where its famed carnival events got the kibosh.

The festival on the City of Water, which draws tens of thousands of visitors a year, was cut short by two days as the country’s number of cases hit 133, more than any other nation outside of Asia, according to the BBC and other reports.

“The ordinance is immediately operative,″ said Veneto Gov. Luca Zaia, whose region includes Venice, of the measure to ban public gatherings.

People were also forbidden from entering and leaving some areas of Veneto and Lombardy — home to Milan — for the next two weeks without special permission, officials said.

Schools and businesses were also closed in some of the regions’ towns, and sporting events were canceled as well, with the shutdowns expected to last at least through March 1.

The Carnival of Venice had drawn thousands of revelers to the region and was supposed to run through Tuesday. But authorities said three people in Venice have tested positive for the virus, all of whom were in their 80s and were hospitalized.

The largest cluster of the country’s virus cases, 89, was reported in the Lombardy region, with nearly all of them in small country towns.

The number of confirmed cases in Italy surged from three Friday to 133 by Sunday morning — the biggest number outside of China.

Italy’s first cases — that of a married Chinese couple who were on vacation in Rome — surfaced in early February.

Residents were urged to stay indoors in Lombardy and Veneto, but police at the entrance to Codogno, one of the hardest-hit towns, weren’t stopping cars from entering or leaving Saturday.

With Post Wires