Coronavirus:
more countries will adopt Italy's measures, says Austrian leader
Sebastian
Kurz says it is a matter of time before other governments are forced to take
drastic containment action
Jon Henley
Europe correspondent
@jonhenley
Sun 8 Mar
2020 16.38 GMTLast modified on Mon 9 Mar 2020 01.00 GMT
Austria’s
chancellor has said other European countries will be forced to adopt
containment measures as drastic as Italy’s, after Rome placed a quarter of the
population in lockdown in an effort to halt the rapid spread of the
coronavirus.
As the head
of the World Health Organization praised Italy’s “genuine sacrifices”,
Sebastian Kurz said the situation in Austria, which has reported 99 Covid-19
cases, was under control and the measures it had adopted were appropriate for
the time being.
He said EU
leaders and health ministers were in close contact over their countries’
handling of the epidemic, which according to the Johns Hopkins tracker has so
far infected more than 107,000 people worldwide and claimed more 3,650 lives.
“It will be
important to decide which steps to take when,” Kurz said. “You can close
schools for one or two weeks and this is urgently necessary in Italy. It will
happen in other European countries. The decisive question is when to do it.”
The
difficulty will be in balancing the need to head off a peak in infections that
could paralyse public health systems against excessive economic damage, he
said. “You have to consider carefully when to adopt these measures, because a
national economy cannot handle this over too long a period.”
Speaking to
French radio, the EU commissioner for the single market, Thierry Breton, said
European countries were “each acting according to the latest available data in
their countries. The virus has spread faster in some places than in others, so
naturally the measures in each differ”.
In the US,
Anthony Fauci, the head of the infectious diseases unit at the National
Institutes of Health, said Americans , and particularly those who are
vulnerable, may have to stop attending big gatherings. Nor could large-scale
quarantines be ruled out, he said.
The WHO
director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, tweeted his appreciation for
Rome’s efforts after the government published a decree barring people from
entering or leaving vast areas of northern Italy without good reason until 3
April.
The
quarantine zones are home to about 16 million people and include the regions
around Venice and the financial capital, Milan. Cinemas, theatres and museums
will be closed nationwide and leave has been cancelled for health workers as
the prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, said the country was facing a national
emergency.
Tedros said
the government and people of Italy, which has confirmed 7,375 cases and 366
deaths, were “taking bold, courageous steps aimed at slowing the spread of the
coronavirus and protecting their country and the world”.
The
lockdown allows people, including tourists, who were in the affected areas
temporarily to return home. Italy’s borders with Austria, Switzerland and
Slovenia remain open, but Alitalia, the national airline, suspended all
national and international flights from Milan Malpensa airport.
Pope
Francis expressed solidarity with the victims of the virus in a prayer and
message livestreamed from the Vatican. Elsewhere in Europe, France confirmed
1,126 cases and 16 deaths. The health minister, Olivier Véran, announced a ban
on all gatherings of more than 1,000 people.
Germany’s
health minister, Jens Spahn, said organisers had been too reluctant to act but
all public events with more than 1,000 participants should be called off.
“Given how fast things are developing, that should change quickly,” he said.
Bulgaria reported its first case on Sunday.
Spain
confirmed 589 cases – a rise of 159 from Saturday – and 17 deaths, and the
president of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, which has 25 cases, is in
quarantine at his residence after a case of coronavirus was detected at a school
whose students visited the presidential palace last week.
Belgium
said it had confirmed 200 cases, including a second at the the European council
in Brussels. Nearly 50 of the 3,000 staff at the organisation, which hosts
ministerial meetings and EU summits, were told to stay at home.
In Iran, 49
new deaths were reported on Sunday, the country’s highest toll for a single
24-hour period. The figure brings the number of fatalities in the country to
194. It has also recorded 6,566 confirmed cases.
The epidemic
has spread to 30 US states, killing at least 19 people. A man in his 50s tested
positive for the virus in Washington, the first confirmed case in the capital,
and another person who travelled through the city has also tested positive in
Maryland. New York announced a state of emergency.
Two people
who tested positive have died in Florida, marking the first deaths on the US
east coast attributed to the outbreak. Donald Trump said he was not concerned
at about the coronavirus getting closer to the White House.
More
passengers on the US cruise ship Grand Princess have tested positive and the
3,533 passengers on board the vessel, which is to be allowed to dock in
Oakland, California, on Monday, have been confined to their cabins. Another
cruise ship carrying 2,000 people, the Costa Fortuna, was turned away by
Malaysia and Thailand.
Colombia
and Cost Rica reported their first cases of the virus over the weekend and a
64-year-old man died in Argentina, marking the first coronavirus fatality in
Latin America.
The number
of infections in South Korea passed 7,000. In China, however, only 44 new cases
were reported on Sunday, the lowest in weeks. Nearly all of them were in Wuhan,
the centre of the outbreak and the remainder imported from abroad, including
Italy and Spain.
At least 10
people were killed in the collapse of a hotel in Quanzhou in eastern China that
was being used to isolate people who had arrived from other parts of the
country, authorities said on Sunday.
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