Italy limits travel and bans public gatherings across whole country
ROME, Italy — Italy's prime minister told people to "stay at home" as the government limited travel and banned public gatherings across the whole country to combat the threat posed by the new coronavirus.
From Tuesday,
Since the COVID-19 disease first emerged in China late last year, Italy has become Europe's hardest-hit country and has seen a rapid rise in cases to
The strict new rules, in place until April 3, also cancel sporting events "of all levels and disciplines", stopping play in the top-flight Serie A football league.
Before signing the decree, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said in a dramatic evening television address that it could "
"
The measures extend a quarantine zone that Italy had imposed for its industrial northern heartland around the cities of Milan and Venice on Sunday.
An AFP count showed Italy had recorded more than half of the 862 deaths reported outside China as of Monday night.
'Moment of responsibility'
The national restrictions mean that schools and universities will all immediately close.
However, it was not immediately clear how all these measures would
Trains and
The government's first set of restrictions for Italy's north sent the stock market into a tailspin that saw the Milan exchange lose
But the expansion of the northern restrictions to the rest of the country just a day later suggests a government struggling to cope with the scale of the medical emergency on its hands.
Italian health officials had warned on Saturday that the northern Lombardy region was
The government also
But the toll has kept growing by the day.
Italy recorded a record 133 deaths on Sunday and immediately announced that it was ordering 22 million surgical masks
The government's latest set of measures mean that people will need to fill out a standard "self-certification" form justifying their reasons for travel.
The government decree says its forms will work on an honours system and no proof of "need" will
"Everyone must give up something to protect the health of citizens," said Conte.
"Today is our moment of responsibility. We cannot let our guard down."
Follow this page for updates on a mysterious pneumonia outbreak that has struck dozens of people in China.
New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says on Sunday that he had contracted COVID-19, testing positive at a key point in his flailing campaign for re-election.
Hipkins saYS on his official social media feed that he would need to isolate for up to five days -- less than two weeks before his country's general election.
The leader of the centre-left Labour Party said he started to experience cold symptoms on Saturday and had cancelled most of his weekend engagements. — AFP
The World Health Organization and US health authorities say Friday they are closely monitoring a new variant of COVID-19, although the potential impact of BA.2.86 is currently unknown.
The WHO classified the new variant as one under surveillance "due to the large number (more than 30) of spike gene mutations it carries", it wrote in a bulletin about the pandemic late Thursday.
So far, the variant has only been detected in Israel, Denmark and the United States. — AFP
The World Health Organization says on Friday that the number of new COVID-19 cases reported worldwide rose by 80% in the last month, days after designating a new "variant of interest".
The WHO declared in May that Covid is no longer a global health emergency, but has warned that the virus will continue to circulate and mutate, causing occasional spikes in infections, hospitalisations and deaths.
In its weekly update, the UN agency said that nations reported nearly 1.5 million new cases from July 10 to August 6, an 80% increase compared to the previous 28 days. — AFP
The head of US intelligence says that there was no evidence that the COVID-19 virus was created in the Chinese government's Wuhan research lab.
In a declassified report, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) says they had no information backing recent claims that three scientists at the lab were some of the very first infected with COVID-19 and may have created the virus themselves.
Drawing on intelligence collected by various member agencies of the US intelligence community (IC), the ODNI report says some scientists at the Wuhan lab had done genetic engineering of coronaviruses similar to COVID-19. — AFP
Boris Johnson deliberately misled MPs over Covid lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street when he was prime minister, a UK parliament committee ruled on Thursday.
The cross-party Privileges Committee said Johnson, 58, would have been suspended as an MP for 90 days for "repeated contempts (of parliament) and for seeking to undermine the parliamentary process".
But he avoided any formal sanction by his peers in the House of Commons by resigning as an MP last week.
In his resignation statement last Friday, Johnson pre-empted publication of the committee's conclusions, claiming a political stitch-up, even though the body has a majority from his own party.
He was unrepentant again on Thursday, accusing the committee of being "anti-democratic... to bring about what is intended to be the final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination".
Calling it "beneath contempt", he said it was "for the people of this to decide who sits in parliament, not Harriet Harman", the veteran opposition Labour MP who chaired the seven-person committee. — AFP
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