Italy rushes to contain 1st major viral outbreak in Europe

Italy scrambled Sunday to check on the spread of Europe’s first major outbreak of the brand new viral disease amid rapidly rising numbers of infections and a third death, calling off the favorite Venice Carnival, scrapping major league soccer matches in the stricken area and shuttering theaters, including Milan’s legendary La Scala.

Your choice to call off Venice Carnival was announced by Veneto regional Gov. Luca Zaia as the quantity of confirmed virus cases soared to 152, the major number outside Asia.

The ordinance is immediately operative and will go into effect at nighttime,’’ said Zaia, whose area includes Venice, where thousands packed St. Mark’s Square. Carnival could have run through Tuesday.

Road blocks were set up in at least some of 10 towns in Lombardy at the epicenter of the outbreak, including in Casalpusterlengo, to keep persons from leaving or arriving. Even trains transiting the region weren’t permitted to stop.

Buses, trains and other kinds of public transport - including boats in Venice - were being disinfected, Zaia told reporters. Museums were also ordered to turn off after Sunday in Venice, a high tourist draw anytime of the entire year, aswell as in neighboring Lombardy, which, with at least 110 confirmed cases, may be the epicenter of the viral outbreak.

Authorities said three persons in Venice have tested positive for the viral disease known as COVID-19, all of them within their late 80s and who were hospitalized in critical condition.

Other northern regions with smaller amounts of cases are Emilia-Romagna and Piedmont.

Italy’s first two cases were a Chinese tourist couple, diagnosed earlier this month and reported recovering in a Rome hospital.

The death on Sunday of an elderly woman, who was simply already experiencing cancer when she contracted the virus, raised the nation’s death toll to three, said Lombardy regional official Giulio Gallera.

Authorities expressed frustration that they haven’t had the opportunity to track down the foundation of the virus that is spreading in the north and which surfaced the other day when an Italian man in his late 30s in Codogno became critically ill.

“The health officials haven’t been yet in a position to pinpoint ‘patient zero,’” Angelo Borrelli, head of the national Civil Protection agency, told reporters in Rome.

At first, it was widely presumed that the man was infected by an Italian friend he dined with and who had recently returned from his job, located in Shanghai. But when the friend tested negative for the virus, attention considered several Chinese residents who frequent the same cafe visited by the stricken man. But Lombardy Gov. Attilio Fontana told reporters each of them tested negative too.

So for now, Borrelli indicated the strategy is to concentrate on closures and other restrictions to attempt to stem the spread in the country, which already had taken measures in early stages in the global virus alarm that included banning direct flights from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau. Italy in addition has tested an incredible number of airport passengers arriving from other places for just about any signs of fever.

“Worry is understandable, panic, no,’’ Premier Giuseppe Conte told circumstances TV talk show host, who informed him that four bottles of disinfectant hand gel, which normally sell for a few euros a piece, were being hawked for €200 on the web. The interview was conducted by phone in a studio without an audience after authorities requested that the public not be allowed set for health concerns.

Gallera told reporters in Milan that schools, museums, discos, pubs and theaters would stay closed for at least a week. But restaurants in Milan and other Lombardy cities outside the key cluster area can still operate since, unlike at concerts and other entertainment venues, in eateries “people are not congregated in a single place and there is space between tables,” Gallera said.

Lombardy’s ban on public events also extended to Masses in the predominantly Roman Catholic nation. Venice also was forbidding public Masses, while in Milan, the city’s iconic Gothic cathedral was closed to visitors. School trips inside Italy and overseas were banned.