This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/07/world/europe/coronavirus-italy.html

The article has changed 29 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 1 Version 2
As Coronavirus Spreads South in Italy, Top Official in Rome Tests Positive Italy Locks Down Much of the Country’s North
(about 8 hours later)
ROME — The coronavirus outbreak that has paralyzed and disrupted economic and social life in Italy spread to the top of Italian politics on Saturday as the leader of the governing coalition’s Democratic Party announced he had contracted the virus. ROME — Italy’s government on Saturday took the extraordinary step of locking down much of the country’s north, restricting movement for about a quarter of the population in regions that serve as the country’s economic engine.
“Well, it’s arrived,” Nicola Zingaretti, the leader of the Democratic Party, said in a Facebook video posted Saturday that was confirmed as legitimate by a spokesman. “I also have the coronavirus.” The move represents the most sweeping effort outside China to stop the spread of the coronavirus and is tantamount to sacrificing the Italian economy in the short term to save it from the ravages of the virus in the long term.
The infection of Mr. Zingaretti represented a new stage in Italy’s outbreak, the largest in Europe and the most deadly outside China and which had been concentrated in the country’s wealthy and industrious north. “We are facing an emergency, a national emergency,” Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said in announcing the government decree in a news conference after 2 a.m.
After the government’s decision last week to close all of Italy’s school, the infection of Mr. Zingaretti, who is based in Rome, where he is also the president of the region of Lazio, provided vivid proof that the virus was no longer a matter of northern exposure, and that the entire country was now grappling with a public health emergency. He called the measures “very rigorous” but necessary to contain the contagion and ease the burden on Italy’s strained health care system. He said people traveling out of, or around, the locked-down areas would have the “obligation” to explain why to the authorities.
Mr. Zingaretti, the head of the country’s largest center-left party and one of the two parties leading Italy, has daily contact with the highest echelon of the political class in the capital, as well as his party’s rank and file members and the many Italians he has met on the campaign trail in the course of Italy’s regional elections. “This is the moment of self-responsibility,” he said.
Already some members of Italy’s Parliament who come from the locked down areas in the Lombardy region have been quarantined to try to slow the spread of the virus, but the infection of a highly prominent figure like Mr. Zingaretti raised the prospect that more of Italy’s political class had been exposed. Italy’s outbreak, already the worst in Europe, has inflicted serious damage on one of the Continent’s most fragile economies. It has led to the closure of schools and, by Saturday, it had infected the leader of one of the two parties in the governing coalition.
“Certainly a politician meets and hugs many people,” said Giovanni Rezza, director of the infective illness department at the National Health Institute. “There is a risk of diffusion.” The measures will turn stretches of Italy’s wealthy north — including the economic and cultural capital of Milan and landmark tourist destinations such as Venice — into quarantined red zones until at least April 3. They will prevent the free movement of roughly 16 million people.
By Saturday, Italy had more than 5,800 cases of the virus, 233 of them fatal, with increases of almost 800 infections and 49 deaths from the day before. Only China has had more people die after contracting the virus.
As the government met late into the night on Saturday, ministers insisted the proposals were merely a draft. Confusion spread about whether officials would actually block travel or only recommend against it.
As soon as the draft became public, shocked regional and municipal leaders in the north argued that they were caught off-guard and that implementing the rules so suddenly would be impossible.
Mr. Conte also announced early Sunday morning that the government would extend less restrictive measures previously imposed in the north, such as the closure of museums, movie theaters, discos and betting parlors, to the rest of the country.
Get an informed guide to the global outbreak with our daily coronavirusGet an informed guide to the global outbreak with our daily coronavirus
newsletter. newsletter.
Elected officials privately expressed concern that the country’s Parliament, with many representatives from the infected north, could be a new theater of contagion. Critics of the government argued that the late-night meeting reflected a lack of coordination and communication with the country that had caused confusion amid the crisis.
In Italy, the toll rose on Saturday to more than 5,800 cases, 233 of them fatal, with increases of almost 800 infections and 49 deaths from the day before. Only China has had more people die after contracting the new coronavirus. Mr. Conte said the authorities would need to approve special travel permissions in or out of the designated areas for family or work emergencies. He said the police would stop travelers to check on their reasons for leaving the locked-down areas.
“I have always said no panic, we will combat this,” said Mr. Zingaretti, who has a reputation for understatement. Wearing a sweater and looking relaxed, he added that he hoped to give a “good example” to Italians by following “to the letter” the advice of the doctors and scientists. He concluded that he would continue to fight for the country, but “from home.” This would all be part of urgent measures to contain the contagion in the Lombardy region and 13 other districts in the Veneto, Piemonte and Emilia Romagna regions in the country’s north.
Last week, the president of the Lombardy region, where most of the country’s infections have occurred, posted a Facebook video in which he put a mask on after learning one of his close collaborators had contracted the virus. Political opponents criticized the video as dramatic and unnecessarily raising alarm. Funerals and cultural events are all banned under the measures. The decree required distance of one meter, including in sporting events, bars and supermarkets. People with fevers, even if they had not yet been tested for the virus, are barred from leaving their house, Mr. Conte said.
Mr. Zingaretti sought to convey a calmer demeanor. Police officers and soldiers would be empowered to enforce containment measures. Churches could remain open, but Masses would be off limits and the faithful would have to stay at least one meter apart from one another.
“I’m well, and so it was decided home isolation,” Mr. Zingaretti said, adding that he would separate himself, and that his family would follow all the advised precautions, as stipulated by Italian protocols for infected people. Italian health officials, he said, had already begun contacting people with whom he worked closely. The government decree essentially shuts down much of the northern region of Lombardy, Italy’s largest and most productive, which accounts for a fifth of Italy’s G.D.P.
Mr. Zingaretti has held meetings at the Lazzaro Spallanzani National Institute for Infectious Diseases in Rome, which has been treating coronavirus cases. He also went there to show support to the Lazio region’s coronavirus task force, according to Luigi Telesca, a spokesman for Mr. Zingaretti, who said aides to the party leader believed he had contracted the virus there. Matteo Caroli, a professor of business management at Luiss Guido Carli University in Rome, said that if “the measures go beyond April, the situation will become systemic and the damage serious.”
On Saturday morning, Mr. Zingaretti had a slight fever and felt a burning sensation in his eyes, Mr. Telesca said.
After his symptoms were reported to health authorities, they ordered a coronavirus test for Mr. Zingaretti and the result was positive.
The vast majority of those who died in Italy after contracting the virus were elderly and many had serious underlying conditions and were destabilized by the virus, according to health experts. Italy, which has won of the world’s most aged populations, has already suffered enormously from the virus, with economic production slowed or outright halted in the northern regions that serve as the country’s economic engine.
Milan, the most vibrant city in the country, has become ghostly. The service sector has been hit hard, with hotels closing entire floors for lack of business, restaurateurs looking sadly over empty tables and taxi drivers waiting in long lines for fares that do not come.
Last week the government announced a huge support package of $7.5 billion euros, or about $8.5 billion, in addition to €900 million announced last week for families and business damaged by the virus.Last week the government announced a huge support package of $7.5 billion euros, or about $8.5 billion, in addition to €900 million announced last week for families and business damaged by the virus.
Churches have had to cancel mass. Schools are closed everywhere, prompting anxiety about child care, especially among working class parents who do not have the ability to work from home. Parents who do stay at home have found themselves struggling to teach division and grammar lessons. In the Navigli area of Milan, known for its bars and night life, people out drinking on Saturday night lamented “martial laws” while anxiously checking their phones for updates.
But the virus has clearly now gained access to the more exclusive halls of power in Rome. “We are enjoying our last moments of freedom” said Lorenzo Cella, a 21-year-old computer programmer.
The Vatican on Friday confirmed its first case of the virus and shut some offices and closed its health clinic for sterilization. A Vatican official was put into a protective quarantine after a priest in Rome tested positive for the virus. Some worried that they would lose their jobs or girlfriends outside of Milan. Others were concerned that the entire economic engine of Italy would stall.
Pope Francis, 83, who lost part of a lung from a respiratory illness in his youth, has been suffering from a cold, though the Vatican has said he has no other illnesses. They have declined to say whether he has been tested for the virus. Leaked reports of the draft late Saturday night infuriated Mr. Conte and prompted panic in Milan but also resistance and anger from mayors and regional presidents across the political spectrum in the northern areas.
According to the guidelines by the Italian government, Francis should limit visitors and stay home. On Friday, Francis expressed his “closeness to those who are ill” with the virus and to health care workers. Attilio Fontana, the president of the Lombardy region, and a prominent figure in the right wing League party, said the plan moved in the direction of containing the virus with decisive measures but also called the plan a “mess,” according the Italian news agency ANSA, because it created confusion about what citizens could and could not do.
On Saturday, the Vatican announced that the papal events in St. Peter’s Square that are typically open to the public, including the pope’s Sunday blessing and the Wednesday general audience, will instead be live streamed from the library of the Vatican’s apostolic palace “to avoid the risk of spreading” the virus, a Vatican statement said. Luca Zaia, the president of the Veneto region, which includes Venice and other cities marked for lockdown, said that the government had only notified him about the potential ban “at the last minute” and they had serious concerns. Since the region was kept out of discussions to draft the order, he said, “it’s literally impossible” for the region to enact it so quickly.
After Mr. Zingaretti announced his illness, expressions of solidarity, a rare element in Italy’s bitter and divisive politics, came from across the political spectrum. The government order also locks down provinces in the Emilia Romagna region south of Lombardy. Stefano Bonaccini, the region’s liberal president, implored Mr. Conte and the country’s health minister, both nominal allies, for more time to come up with a more “coherent and shared” solution.
“My hope for a speedy recovery,” Matteo Salvini, the leader of the nationalist League party, who has criticized the government’s response to the crisis and sought to cause the coalition’s collapse, said on Twitter. “It’s not normal to do polemics when health is in question.” Mayors in some of the cities marked for quarantine expressed deep ire over first hearing about the proposed order on television.
Elisabetta Povoledo contributed reporting. “It’s incredible,” said Rasero Maurizio, the mayor of Asti in the northern region of Piedmont, who posted a livid video of himself in a white T-shirt from his home saying that he had just heard about the potential closing of his town on television. “No one told me.”
In addition to Asti, Modena, Parma, Piacenza, Reggio Emilia, Rimini, Pesaro and Urbino, Venice, Padua, Treviso, Asti and Alessandria — all in the north — were set to be locked down.
But there were clear signs that the virus was spreading southward.
Earlier on Saturday, it touched the top of Italian politics as the leader of the governing coalition’s Democratic Party said he was infected.
“Well, it’s arrived,” Nicola Zingaretti, the leader of the Democratic Party and the president of the region of Lazio, said in a Facebook video posted Saturday. “I also have the coronavirus.”
The infection of Mr. Zingaretti, who is based in Rome, provided vivid proof that the virus was no longer a matter of northern exposure, and that the entire country was now grappling with a public health emergency.
Mr. Zingaretti, the head of the country’s largest center-left party and one of the two parties leading Italy, has daily contact with top politicians in the capital as well as his party’s rank-and-file members.
Already some members of Italy’s Parliament who come from the locked down areas in the Lombardy region have been quarantined. But the infection of a highly prominent figure like Mr. Zingaretti, who felt feverish on Saturday, raised the prospect that more Italian politicians had been exposed.
“Certainly a politician meets and hugs many people,” said Giovanni Rezza, director of the infective illness department at the National Health Institute. “There is a risk of diffusion.”
Elected officials privately expressed concern that the country’s Parliament, with many representatives from the north, could be a new theater of contagion.
The vast majority of those who died in Italy after contracting the virus have been elderly and many had serious underlying conditions and were destabilized by the virus, according to health experts. Italy, which has one of the world’s most aged populations, has already suffered enormously from the virus.
Now, the potential new restrictions of the government persuaded many in Lombardy that there was more hardship to come.
But some welcomed the discipline.
“In China, they are more rigid,” said Miriam Ben Cheikh Amor, a 26-year-old waitress. “Maybe we need some of that too.”
Mr. Conte hoped that spirit would spread, and said that now was the time to band together and obey the new rules, not to “try and be clever.”
But some in Milan were skeptical.
“It will never work in Italy,” Paolo Imparato, a 26-year-old pizza maker said Saturday night when asked about the potential new ban on movement. “People will run away, they will go around.”
Emma Bubola contributed reporting in Milan and Elisabetta Povoledo contributed reporting in Rome.