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AFP
Codogno
Police patrolled the perimeters of virus-stricken northern Italian towns on Sunday as Italy put tens of thousands of people under lockdown and cancelled festivals and sporting events in an attempt to halt Europe’s worst outbreak of the new coronavirus.
An elderly cancer patient became the third person who has tested positive for the virus to die since Friday in the country.
The head of Italy’s civil protection department, Angelo Borrelli, said during a news conference that 152 people had now tested positive for the virus, including the three deceased.
The mounting number of infections has sparked fears of further contagion and prompted the government to effectively quarantine 11 villages.
High profile events including fashion shows in Milan, Serie A football matches and the last days of the Venice Carnival have been disrupted, even those well outside the lockdown areas.
“Virus -- Northern Italy under Siege,” read Sunday’s headline in the Il Fatto Quotidiano daily, as television stations delivered a steady stream of images of masked locals and hospital workers in protective suits. “Virus Paralysis,” read La Repubblica.
Health officials in Lombardy region, the centre of Italy’s coronavirus outbreak, said an elderly woman being treated in hospital for cancer who had tested positive for the virus had died.
If coronavirus is determined to be the cause of death, the woman will be the third person in Italy to have died from COVID-19, the official name of the disease that was first detected in China at the end of last year and has since spread across the world.
In Italy over 50,000 people in 11 towns have been ordered not to leave their areas, most of them centred around the small town of Codogno, about 70 kilometres (43 miles) southeast of Milan.
Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said on Saturday that residents could face weeks of lockdown, enough time for any potential infection to incubate.
In one affected village, Casalpusterlengo, police set up checkpoints to stop all vehicles travelling in both directions on the road that leads to Codogno, a 10 minute drive away.
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24/02/2020
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