Panic hits Italy amid 3 Covid-19 deaths
Credit to Author: Agence France-Presse| Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2020 16:14:29 +0000
ROME: An elderly cancer patient became the third person known to be infected with the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) to die in Italy, health officials said on Sunday, as the number of people contracting the virus continued to mount.
The death of the woman in a hospital in the small city of Crema in Lombardy, the center of Italy’s coronavirus scare, followed that of a 77-year-old woman on Saturday and a 78-year-old man on Friday, the first European victim of the Covid-19.
Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte urged people “not to give in to panic and follow the advice of health authorities.”
“We should not be afraid because of the rising numbers,” he told public radio station Rai Uno, adding in another interview that cases were being discovered “because we are carrying out thousands of checks.”
The head of Italy’s civil protection department, Angelo Borrelli, told a news conference that 152 people had now tested positive for the virus in the country, including the three deceased.
The cancer patient had been hospitalised for a few days, said Lombardy’s health chief, Giulio Gallera. “She’d been tested and they already knew she had the coronavirus,” he said, adding that it was too early to know whether the virus was the actual cause of death.
The deaths, and steadily rising number of cases of infected people, have prompted a series of security measures to try to check the spread of the contagion.
Eleven towns — 10 in Lombardy and 1 in neighboring Veneto — are under lockdown, with some 50,000 residents prohibited from leaving. Regional authorities have ordered gathering spots, such as bars, restaurants and discos to close.
AFP