Whole of Italy placed on lockdown as 97 more coronavirus patients die

The Local - Italy ^ | 9 March 2020 22:06 CET+01:00

[Zhang Fei]

The Italian PM Giuseppe Conte announced on Monday that special measures will be imposed across the whole country including travel restrictions and a ban on gatherings in a bid to stem the spread of coronavirus (Paywall Free).

The measures had initially been imposed on certain regions in the north like Lombardy which has seen the biggest outbreak of the virus.

But on Monday evening, after it was announced the death toll had risen by 97 to 463, the PM said the measures would be imposed nationwide.

Those measures include banning all public gatherings and stopping travel other than for work and emergencies.

Conte said the measures, which will affect 60 million people, were needed to protect the country's most vulnerable and people should now stay at home, Reuters news agency said. The decree would come into force on Tuesday morning.

All sporting events will be suspended including Italy's Serie A football league.

"I am going to sign a decree that can be summarised as follows: I stay at home," Conte announced in a dramatic evening television address.

"The whole of Italy will become a protected zone," he said.

Travel in and out of the country as well as movement between cities will be restricted.

But it was not immediately clear how all these measures will be imposed.

Trains and numerous flights continued to operate into and out of Milan on Monday despite the earlier set of restrictions for its Lombardy region.

The government had already moved to close schools and universities across the country as well as cinemas, theatres and gyms.

Another 1,897 cases were confirmed in the past 24 hours, Italy's Civil Protection Department announced on Monday evening, bringing the total number of people confirmed to have contracted the new virus since the outbreak began to 9,172.

[kearnyirish2]

I understand the workers enjoying, but also see the problems it presents. I don’t understand why the birthrate is so low if they have those protections at their jobs; it is a big reason people here in the US don’t breed.

[Labyrinthos]

And many of them live in high density, hygienically challenged ghettos.

[DoughtyOne]

I would imagine at a certain level of taxation and debt, it becomes
daunting to think of having kids.

DemoⁿⁱcRats have no idea how much they are undermining the future of
our nation.

[kearnyirish2]

The insecurity of future income is a big reason; NJ’s high taxes weren’t an issue until after the “good jobs” left and people had high taxes with McJob paychecks.

The Democrat base sees this nation as not worth keeping or saving.

[DoughtyOne]

I agree that they have done their level best to destroy the youth’s spirit.

[kearnyirish2]

I have working teens, and it is depressing that they earn similar wages to what I earned at the same point in my life decades ago. Not adjusted for inflation, just the same wages; prices have risen considerably over the intervening years.

[Fred Nerks]

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/this-is-china-not-italy_b_11866964

By the end of the nineties, the textile industry crisis hit Prato severely and companies started closing down. Yet, the Chinese community kept growing. They started connecting to mainland China, offering the prized Made in Italy label. They diversified production by launching into garmenting and accessories. They enlarged the boundaries by reaching the frontiers of Florence (where the above mentioned protest took place) and entering the lucrative business of leather goods. Of course, most of them kept working illegally. The Chinese triad saw a business opportunity in this for human trafficking and launched a scheme whereby they sponsored workers to travel to Italy and work with no pay: a form of modern slavery. Participants were allowed to leave the system after working a certain number of years to launch their own activity. Many people were incentivized to come from China and work in awful conditions and soon enough, this created a small Chinese town in Italy. Today in Prato, you have 50,000 Chinese people out of which no more than 16,000 are registered (Guardian, July 2016.) Officially, the others don’t exist!