Italians were packing into supermarkets to stock up for a weeks-long quarantine today as police began roaming the streets to enforce a new nationwide lockdown.
Panic-buyers were queuing with shopping trolleys outside 24-hour supermarkets in cities including Rome and Naples last night after prime minister Giuseppe Conte announced the latest drastic measures.
Conte declared that ‘everyone must give up something to protect the health of citizens’ with more than 9,000 cases now confirmed and 463 people dead.
Police in Naples were patrolling the streets with a loudhailer to warn people to ‘stay indoors, avoid unnecessary outings and avoid going to crowded places’.
The virus is spreading so quickly that doctors are now having to make life-or-death decisions about who gets access to intensive care.
Ethics rules call on doctors to consider a patient’s age and their chance of survival when allocating hospital beds.
Panic-buying: People cram into a supermarket in Rome this morning, some of them wearing face masks, after Italy expanded its drastic quarantine measures nationwide
Long queues: Customers line up outside a 24-hour supermarket last night after the Italian prime minister extended the coronavirus lockdown to the whole country
Warning: Authorities were roaming around Naples last night (pictured) with a loudhailer that told people to stay indoors because of the ‘coronavirus emergency’
The Italian society of anesthesiology and intensive care has published 15 ethical recommendations to consider for doctors when deciding on admissions.
The criteria include the patient’s age and the likelihood of survival, and not just ‘first come first served.’
‘It’s a reasoning that our colleagues make,’ Dr. Guido Giustetto, head of the association of doctors in northern Piedmont, said yesterday.
‘It becomes dramatic if, rather than doing it under normal situations, they do it because the beds are so scarce that someone might not have access to medical care.’
Italy expanded the quarantine measures to all 60million people in the country last night after a lockdown in the hardest-hit north had failed to slow the outbreak.
‘Our habits must be changed, changed now. We all have to give up something for the good of Italy,’ Conte said.
‘When I speak of Italy, I speak of our dear ones, of our grandparents and of our parents,’ Conte said.
‘We will succeed only if we all collaborate and we adapt right away to these more stringent norms.’
Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte during a press conference at Chigi Palace in Rome last night where he announced the latest quarantine measures
Doctors work at a hospital in Schiavonia in northern Italy with more than 9,000 coronavirus cases now confirmed in the country in the worst outbreak outside China and South Korea
Shoppers stock up on food in Rome this morning as they prepare for a quarantine which is due to last until at least April 3
Footage showed long queues of panic-buyers with shopping trolleys outside 24-hour supermarkets in Rome and Naples
A cyclist shows his paperwork during police and military checks at the central station in Milan yesterday – with all three people wearing masks
Conte also raged at young people who had continued to gather socially as the virus spread, saying ‘this night life … we can’t allow this any more.’
The nationwide restrictions mean that all schools and universities will remain closed until April 3, with cafes, pubs and eateries ordered to close until dusk.
Italians have been ordered not to move around the country except for work and emergencies, with public gatherings and football matches cancelled.
Italy registered 1,807 more confirmed cases as of Monday evening, for a national total of 9,172.
The number of dead in Italy also increased by 97 to 463 – most of them elderly with previous ailments.
It comes with China beginning to scale down its virus operation, closing the temporary hospitals which sprung up in Wuhan where the outbreak began.
‘Now that the virus has a foothold in so many countries, the threat of a pandemic has become very real,’ WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
But he welcomed Italy’s tough measures, noting that just four countries – China, South Korea, Italy and Iran – accounted for 93 per cent of cases worldwide.
‘It would be the first pandemic that could be controlled,’ Tedros added. ‘The bottom line is we are not at the mercy of the virus.’
A masked man checks a person’s paperwork at Milan central station yesterday
A supermarket worker wearing a protective face mask is pictured through a window in Naples
A man wearing a protective face mask walks next to the Trevi fountain in Rome this morning – an area usually full of tourists
The Lombardy government has been scrambling to increase its intensive care capacity, converting operating and recovery rooms into isolated wards.
It has cobbled together 150 more beds in the last two weeks and expects another 150 in the coming week.
‘Unfortunately we’re only at the beginning,’ said Dr. Massimo Galli, head of infectious disease at Milan’s Sacco hospital.
Speaking to SkyTg24, Galli said the numbers of infections registered in Lombardy last week were similar to those in Wuhan, China in late January.
Galli noted that Wuhan, the center of China’s outbreak that infected more than 80,000 people nationwide, is a concentrated metropolis of 11 million and Lombardy is spread out.
But the numbers ‘tell you that the diffusion is a real possibility,’ he warned.
Lazio, the region surrounding the capital Rome, saw its cases jump from 87 to 102 in a day, a sign that the virus was propagating far from the northern concentrations.
The nearly deserted Corso Venezia street in Milan this morning, with northern Italy at the centre of the outbreak
This picture shows the Via Dante and Cordusio metro station in Milan today with only a handful of people walking around
A long line of shoppers queueing with trolleys at a supermarket after last night’s announcement
Also alarming was Italy’s high fatality rate: With 463 dead and 9,172 infected, Italy’s fatality rate is running at five per cent, higher than the 3-4 per cent elsewhere.
Dr Giovanni Rezza, head of infectious disease at the National Institutes of Health, attributed it to the fact that Italy has the world’s oldest population after Japan.
The median age of Italy’s virus-related dead is 80.
But some younger people have also been in intensive care, including the first person to test positive in the north who had not been to China.
The 38-year-old Unilever worker named Mattia came to be known in Italy as Patient No 1.
At the San Matteo hospital in Pavia, there was a sigh of relief after Mattia began breathing on his own Monday with just a small amount of oxygen assistance.
He was moved out of intensive care to a sub-ICU unit and was speaking with doctors.
‘This disease has a long life,’ intensive care chief Dr Francesco Mojoli told RAI state television.
‘Now we hope that the fact that he was young and in good shape will help him get back to his normal life.’