Prague
Italy should ban all its citizens from travelling to Europe in order to curb the new coronavirus outbreak, Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said on Sunday as Italy imposed a virtual lockdown across a swathe of its wealthy north earlier on Sunday, including the financial capital Milan, in a drastic new attempt to try to contain a rapidly growing outbreak of coronavirus.
“Italy should ban all its citizens from travelling to Europe, because we are not able to order such a thing within (the European Union’s borderless area) Schengen,” Babis said on Czech Television.
Moscow city authorities have threatened prison terms of up to five years for people failing to self-isolate in their homes for two weeks after visiting countries hit hard by the coronavirus outbreak, Reuters reports.
In Iran, health ministry has reported 49 new deaths from the novel coronavirus, the highest toll within 24 hours since the start of the outbreak in the country, AFP reports.
The new count brings the number of those killed by the virus in the country since mid-February to 194, one of the highest tolls outside of China, where the disease originated. The virus has spread to all of Iran’s 31 provinces with 6,566 confirmed cases.
Authorities in New York Saturday declared emergency in the city as the number of confirmed coronavirus cases rose to 89, while the nationwide death toll from the virus reached 19 on Saturday.
More than half of all US states have reported cases of the coronavirus, which originated in China last year and causes the sometimes deadly respiratory illness COVID-19. As the outbreak takes root, daily life has become increasingly disrupted, with concerts and conferences canceled and universities telling students to stay home and take classes online.
Organizers of the Conservative Political Action Conference, a high-profile annual gathering that took place in Maryland last month, said on Saturday one of their attendees had tested positive for the virus after exposure prior to the event. The person had no interactions with President Donald Trump or Vice President Mike Pence, who were in attendance, the American Conservative Union said in a statement.
The two latest deaths were in Washington’s King County, the hardest hit area in the United States after the virus spread among residents at a nursing facility in the Seattle suburb of Kirkland. The first deaths on the East Coast were announced late Friday, with two people succumbing in Florida.
In New York, the number of confirmed cases rose by 13 on Saturday to a statewide total of 89 people, Governor Andrew Cuomo said. He issued a declaration of emergency.
“It allows expedited purchasing and expedited hiring, which is what we need right now,” Cuomo told a news conference.
Kansas, Missouri and Washington DC announced their first cases.
In international waters off California, passengers on a cruise ship that was barred from docking in San Francisco after some aboard tested positive for the novel coronavirus did not know on Saturday when they might be able to step ashore.
Trump said on Friday he would prefer the Grand Princess’s 2,400 passengers and 1,100 crew remain out at sea, but that he would let others decide where she should dock.
After 19 crew and two passengers out of 46 tested on the Grand Princess were found to have the virus, Pence said the ocean liner will be taken to an unspecified non-commercial port where everyone on board will be tested again, and that those “who need to be quarantined will be quarantined” and those who need medical care will receive it.
US officials also began tracking another cruise ship that may have shared crew with the Grand Princess or the Diamond Princess, another ship where the coronavirus spread onboard, Pence said.
One Grand Princess passenger described a dull and sometimes queasy wait for news of when their limbo would end. —Agencies
