Italian streets and piazzas were empty today while shoppers crammed into supermarkets to stock up for a lengthy quarantine as the country began an unprecedented nationwide lockdown.
Tourist favourites including Milan’s shopping galleries, Rome’s Spanish Steps and Vatican’s St Peter’s Square were all but deserted today after the drastic coronavirus measures were extended to the entire country last night.
Panic-buyers were packing into supermarkets this morning with queues stretching outside because of a rule that demands a 3ft gap between shoppers – meaning only a limited number can go inside at once.
In Naples, police were roaming the streets with a loudhailer last night to warn people to ‘stay indoors, avoid unnecessary outings and avoid crowded places’ because of the ‘coronavirus emergency’.
Prime minister Giuseppe Conte declared last night that ‘everyone must give up something to protect the health of citizens’ with 9,000 virus cases confirmed in Italy and 463 people dead.
Anyone with a fever has been ordered to stay indoors with travel banned except in emergencies and public gatherings including weddings, funerals and sports fixtures shut down.
The virus is spreading so quickly that doctors are now having to make life-or-death decisions about who gets access to intensive care, with medics describing ‘overwhelmed’ hospitals where non-virus cases are sidelined.
British Airways and Jet2 have today cancelled all their hundreds of flights to and from Italy until April at the earliest and easyJet has grounded most services – but people are still flowing into Britain from without checks.
BA has axed its 60 flights a day to cities including Milan, Venice and Rome while Jet2 has gone even further and cancelled its services for almost two months until April 26.
EasyJet has stopped the majority of its flights to northern Italy but planes will still fly from southern cities such as Rome and Naples despite the blanket travel ban imposed by the Italian government.
The UK government has now advised Britons against all but essential travel to the country, but Italian airports remain open. Public Health England says airline cabin crews have been trained to spot virus symptoms.
Many British travellers returning home from Italy told MailOnline today they had no idea the Government was now demanding they go into self-isolation for 14 days as soon as they land in the UK. They must also find their way home by public transport if they are not driving themselves home.
The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan – one of the city’s famous shopping galleries – is nearly deserted today with Italy beginning an unprecedented nationwide lockdown to tackle the coronavirus outbreak
Pigeons are the only crowd in sight in Milan’s Piazza del Duomo today, usually a tourist hotspot. The Duomo cathedral was already closed because of the coronavirus outbreak
A police car is parked near the Spanish Steps in Rome, which are usually a popular place for tourists to sit but are nearly deserted today because of the quarantine
Two people look at a deserted St Peter’s Square in the Vatican today after the quarantine was extended to the whole of Italy
A nearly empty car park at a deserted shopping centre in Turin this morning, in northern Italy at the centre of the outbreak
Customers keep a 3ft distance between them – as Italians have been urged to do by the new quarantine rules – while lining up to enter a post office in Rome this morning
Italians pack supplies of groceries into overloaded shopping trolleys at a supermarket in Rome this morning as they prepare for a weeks-long quarantine after Italy’s lockdown was extended nationwide
Uber driver Francesco Stabile (left), from Letchworth, Hertfordshire, arrived at Stansted Airport from Italy today. He said he did not know about the UK’s new demand for a 14-day self-isolation period after returning from Italy. Pictured right are newlyweds Sam Welch, 34 and his wife Jasmine, 30, who cut short their Venetian honeymoon to return home to Norfolk
A crowd of people with shopping trolleys, some of them wearing masks, gather outside a supermarket in Rome this morning
Italian couple Michele and Eleonora (pictured left), from Sardinia, and retired British greengrocer Martin Rudd, from Leigh on Sea in Essex, stand in the arrivals hall at London Stansted Airport today
Uber driver Francesco Stabile told MailOnline at Stansted today that he had ‘no idea’ about the 14-day self-isolation advice after visiting his girlfriend in Italy.
Mr Stabile 38, who has lived in Letchworth for the past 16 years, said he was keen to get back to work, adding: ‘I am an Uber driver. I go to Italy every two weeks to visit my girlfriend. I have received information from the Foreign Office but I don’t know anything about self-isolating. I am feeling well. I have nothing wrong with me.’
Some flights from Italy bound for the US were also going ahead today.
At least three flights from Rome had already departed for America as of 7am EST (11am UK time) – bound for Miami, Atlanta and New York’s Newark Liberty airport.
Another flight from Milan, at the center of Italy’s outbreak, to Newark was also scheduled to go ahead having been delayed from the previous day.
New York’s JFK airport had cancelled two flights from Milan as of Tuesday morning, with a third Emirates flight due to arrive at 7pm still showing as ‘scheduled’ though it is far from clear whether it will go ahead.
On Monday night, passengers arriving in the US still faced no screening.
Just one flight landed in America last night: Emirates Flight 205 from Milan, which arrived at JFK at 7.53pm.
The new restrictions shutting down Italy were announced while the passenger jet was in the air.
But travellers were furious at the lack of checks in US airports, noting that no one was being screened for COVID-19 symptoms upon landing.
‘My friend just landed at JFK from Italy and they didn’t even check her or anyone on her plane but they checked the plane from China. Even though all of Italy just got shut down makes total sense!’ a Twitter user named Kimberly sarcastically posted Monday night.
Huge numbers of flights from Italy to the US have been cancelled, but more are scheduled for the forthcoming days.
Marjorie Perrelli Day tweeted at JFK’s Twitter account: ‘I have friends coming from Italy today from Rome. What will they have to do since Italy is now totally shut down. People have been tweeting that JFK has zero screening. So can you explain this?’
Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz said today his country was putting in place ‘an entry ban for people from Italy to Austria, unless they have a doctor’s certificate’.
Austrians in neighbouring Italy will be allowed to return as long as they agree to a two-week home quarantine, he added. Interior minister Karl Nehammer said trains and flights from Italy to Austria would be stopped.
The measure follows growing calls for greater border controls within Europe, although the EU has maintained it has no plans to scrap the Schengen border-free zone.
Spain today decided to cancel all direct flights from Italy for two weeks in a bid to stop the spread of the coronavirus, while Malta has stopped all travel links with Italy, its nearest neighbour and main source of food and other essentials.
However, most governments are still allowing flights – effectively leaving it to airlines to decide.
Saudi Arabia is one exception, after the government halted flights between the kingdom and eight countries including Italy.
Lebanon has also halted flights from several countries including Italy, although Lebanese citizens and residents are exempted. Kenya’s government has suspended flights from northern Italy.
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
People queue for groceries at a supermarket in Rome last night, with the unprecedented quarantine due to last until April 3
The Pope celebrates Mass in an empty chapel this morning, a week after the 83-year-old pontiff cancelled a series of events over health fears
The Vittorio Emanuele II shopping gallery in Milan – usually full of tourists – is almost empty on Tuesday morning
A man wearing a protective face mask walks next to the Trevi fountain in Rome this morning – an area usually full of tourists
It comes as Italy faces being overwhelmed by the scale of the outbreak with doctors making comparisons to wartime triage medics deciding who lives, who dies and who gets access to the limited number of beds.
Italian health officials had warned on Saturday that the northern Lombardy region was starting to run out of hospital beds for its intensive care patients.
The government also began to recall retired doctors as part of an effort to quickly bolster the health service with 20,000 staff.
Ethics rules call on doctors to consider a patient’s age and their chance of survival when allocating hospital beds.
The Italian society of anaesthesiology 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 its quarantine measures to all 60million people in the country last night after a lockdown in the hardest-hit north, including Milan and Venice, 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,’ prime minister Conte said.
‘When I speak of Italy, I speak of our dear ones, of our grandparents and of our parents,’ he said.
‘We will succeed only if we all collaborate and we adapt right away to these more stringent norms.’
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.’
A nun walks past a deserted St Peter’s Square in Vatican City this morning, with the quarantine now extended southwards
Customers line up to go shopping at a supermarket in Rome today, pushing trolleys to stock up for a lengthy quarantine
Warning: Authorities were roaming around Naples last night (pictured) with a loudhailer that told people to stay indoors because of the ‘coronavirus emergency’
People wearing masks buy groceries at a supermarket in Italy today with people stocking up for a lengthy quarantine
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.
The streets of Rome were much quieter than normal this morning, with cars moving freely under a clear blue sky in the normally traffic-clogged centre.
Rome commuters could easily find seats in the usually jam-packed underground system during the morning rush hour today.
In Milan, checkpoints were set up at the city’s central railway station to screen travellers for the first time. People at the station were required to sign a police form, self-certifying why they were traveling.
‘Until a few days ago, the thinking was the alarm would pass in some weeks, we just need to follow the rules. Now we need to explain to citizens that the situation is very, very serious, our hospitals are at the point of collapse,’ the mayor of the Lombardy city of Bergamo, Giorgio Gori, told RAI state television.
Meanwhile, payments on mortgages will be suspended across the whole of Italy, the country’s deputy economy minister said today in the latest effort to manage the economic impact of the crisis.
‘Yes, that will be the case, for individuals and households,’ Laura Castelli said in an interview with Radio Anch’io, when asked about the possibility.
Italy’s banking lobby ABI said yesterday that most lenders would offer debt moratoriums to small firms and households grappling with the economic fallout.
The government has also drawn up plans for an economic stimulus and has led calls for the EU to loosen budget rules to tackle the crisis.
On Monday, the Milan stock exchange dropped over 11 per cent and Italy’s borrowing costs shot up, reviving fears that an economy already struggling under the eurozone’s second-heaviest debt pile could be plunged into crisis.
Industry minister Stefano Patuanelli said today that the government would approve measures worth around 10 billion euros. Conte has already promised ‘massive shock therapy’ to help deal with the immediate impact.
Pigeons are the only large group of visitors on the Piazza del Duomo in Milan this morning, next to the cathedral which had already been closed because of the coronavirus outbreak
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
A view of the mostly deserted Via Dante pedestrian street in central Milan this morning
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
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 in December last year.
‘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.’
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.
Pope Francis gathers his thoughts during a live-streamed Mass at his Vatican guest house today, which he celebrated alone
Francis holds up a Communion wafer during his solitary Mass at the Vatican this morning where he urged priests to visit coronavirus sufferers
A soldier holds his gun near the Duomo cathedral in Milan this morning with the whole of Italy now in lockdown
A largely deserted road in Milan today, although a tram is still running – with public transport continuing to operate
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
People queue with trolleys outside a 24-hour supermarket in Rome in the early hours of this morning following the lockdown
Paul Hunter, professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia, said: ‘The recent extension of Covid-19 controls in Italy represent one of the most rigorous country-wide control measures implemented in the last 50 years.
‘Whilst we have seen in Wuhan that such intensive social distancing can bring the epidemic under control, it is far from clear how long this may need to be maintained in the Italian context.
‘Unlike the situation in Wuhan where there was the possibility that the global epidemic could be prevented, Covid-19 is already spreading globally. So when the restrictions in Italy are eased there may still be a large number of cases in nearby countries that could lead to spread back into Italy.
‘Would this degree of restriction be appropriate for the UK? Probably not as we are currently seeing a much more gradual increase in numbers and these are already distributed throughout the UK, unlike the situation in Italy where cases were concentrated in a single region.
‘More rigorous social distancing measures are likely to be implemented in the UK over coming days or weeks as case numbers increase. But the timing of their introduction will be chosen to hopefully maximise the benefit whilst minimising the harm to British society.’
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.
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.’
The nearly deserted Corso Venezia street in Milan this morning, with northern Italy at the centre of the outbreak
A waitress in Milan looks on by a sign advising clients to keep their distance from each other, under Italy’s new quarantine rules
This picture shows the Via Dante and Cordusio metro station in Milan today with only a handful of people walking around
A woman stands by a stall at Campo dei Fiori open-air market, in Rome, after the lockdown was extended from the north
A man wearing a respiratory mask shops at a fruit and vegetable market in Rome on Tuesday morning
A long line of shoppers queueing with trolleys at a supermarket after last night’s announcement