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Italy Limits Movement in Entire Country in Bid to Halt Coronavirus Italy Announces Restrictions Over Entire Country in Attempt to Halt Coronavirus
(about 2 hours later)
ROME — The Italian government on Monday night locked down the entire country in a desperate effort to stem a coronavirus outbreak that has hobbled the country’s already vulnerable economy, threatened to overwhelm its public health system and killed more people than in any country outside China. ROME — Italy on Monday became the first European country to announce severe nationwide limits on travel as the government struggled to stem the spread of a coronavirus outbreak that has hobbled the economy, threatened to overwhelm public health care and killed more people than anywhere outside China.
The measures, announced in a prime time news conference by the country’s prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, went further than even those taken by the authoritarian regime in China, where the outbreak originated. They immediately raised the question of whether an entire modern European nation protective of its individual freedoms would be willing to make the necessary sacrifices. The measures, announced in a prime time news conference by the country’s prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, sought to adopt the kind of drastic limits that may be working to control the virus in China, an authoritarian regime.
Those restrictions had been placed on the “red zone” created in northern Italy, covering about 16 million people, but Mr. Conte extended them to an entire nation of 60 million. But the scope of the clampdown In Italy, applied to roughly 60 million people — from islands in the south to the Alps in the north — immediately raised the question of whether an entire modern European nation protective of its individual freedoms would make the necessary sacrifices.
“We all have to renounce something for the good of Italy,” said Mr. Conte as he announced that the government would impose more stringent rules over the entire Italian peninsula to make sure that everyone stayed “at home.” The broader restrictions came just hours after the authorities announced that 9,172 people had been infected by the virus, 1,598 more than the day before. Deaths climbed to 463 people, the majority of whom are overwhelmingly elderly and sick people. There were 97 more deaths since Sunday.
“We have to do it immediately,” he said. As of Tuesday, permission would be necessary for Italians who sought to move around the country for reasons of work, health or extenuating circumstances. The same criteria would be applied for Italians looking to leave the country, but Mr. Conte suggested that foreigners could still come to Italy.
Mr. Conte said permission would be necessary for Italians who seek to move around the country for reasons of work, health or special needs. As a result, he said, schools and universities will remain closed until at least April 3. More concretely, he said that schools and universities would remain closed as a result until at least April 3. Decrees banned jail visits and day-release programs for inmates, setting off riots across the country at 27 prisons. Guards were held hostage, and several inmates died in Modena.
All sports events and outdoor gatherings would now be forbidden. A 6 p.m. curfew on bars, currently in place in the northern areas, would be extended to the whole country. The days of young people gathering at outdoor events and pubs were over, he said.
“We all have to renounce something for the good of Italy,” said Mr. Conte, announcing that the government would enact stronger, more stringent rules than had been introduced just over a day earlier to the country’s wealthy north. He said the classifications between levels of threat in different regions and provinces would be replaced by a blanket restriction on nonessential movement across the country that he called “Italy, protected zone.”
As he attempted to rally Italians to abide by the measures, Mr. Conte emphasized that the outbreak, Europe’s worst, presented an existential threat to the country’s elderly population — the Continent’s oldest — and to the health care system that served them.
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The sudden expansion of travel restrictions reflected the government’s effort to catch up to the spread of a virus that has consistently outpaced its efforts to contain it.
After the virus first appeared more than two weeks ago, the government first locked down 11 towns, but deaths and cases continued to spike.
Early Sunday, it announced that it would restrict the movement of about a quarter of Italy’s population, locking down the region of Lombardy and risking its northern economic heart for the health of the entire country and the survival of an overwhelmed health care system.
But those measures, already enormous in scope, have not stalled the virus’s toll. Instead, they have prompted confusion and anxiety as vague instructions from officials undercut the government’s assertions of control and authority.
Different regions had enforced different measures, politicians offered different definitions of what “movement” meant, and internet rumors spread unsubstantiated — and, the authorities said, false — accounts of overburdened hospitals denying care to anyone over 60. Riots broke out in 27 prisons, with guards held hostage and several inmates dying, in part because the decree had banned jail visits and day-release programs for inmates.
Residents in and out of the locked-down areas of the north expressed bewilderment at what they could or could not do, or should do, to protect themselves.
“We are hearing too many things, and people don’t really get what’s going on,” said Laurence Paretti, 56, who window-shopped in Milan, where she taught yoga. She said she assumed it was fine to take a walk around the city but said that the government’s explanations “aren’t clear at all.”
Mr. Conte acknowledged that a change was necessary on Monday night, as he introduced what he called stronger and broader restrictions. “We have to do it immediately,” he said.
Giovanni Rezza, director of the infective illness department at the National Health Institute, called the decision “necessary” and suggested that European neighbors such as France and Germany should follow suit.
He said Italy was essentially faced with two choices, a Wuhan-style lockdown in which people could not leave their houses, including in the economic capital of Milan, or the option the government took, imposing partial travel restrictions and social distancing by closing bars and sporting events and thus keeping people away from one another.
Mr. Rezza, who on Monday morning raised the alarm of the virus hitting Rome, said he believed the government feared an epidemic in the less developed south. “There is a huge scare that the virus spreads to southern regions,” where the health care system is much inferior to the one in the north, he said.
In Milan, police stopped cars asking them to fill out forms explaining where they were going and why, but it was not immediately clear how broadly, or seriously, the new measures would be applied or enforced.
In a reflection of how the spread of the virus had evolved into a national emergency, the government’s decree received support across the political spectrum.
Matteo Salvini, the opposition leader of the nationalist League party, who had pressed Mr. Conte earlier in the day to expand the restrictive measures to the whole country, responded with measured approval. But he also said Mr. Conte needed to be clearer, and that it was necessary, “to close everything and immediately, without leaving space for doubts or interpretations.”
Matteo Renzi, a former prime minister, had criticized the government’s failure to effectively communicate the importance of the previous restrictions. He too said he had urged the government to expand the measures to all of Italy to stop the virus from spreading across the country and deeper into Europe. He said in an interview on Monday night that he thought Italians would now better obey the new decree “because now it’s all of Italy. It’s not one part divided from the other. You have to do it for everybody.”
Mr. Conte, a former ally of Mr. Salvini was until two years ago a little known law professor. Now he finds himself leading the country during its greatest challenge in recent history. He has a circular and legalistic speaking style and a habit for complimenting himself on his clarity.
But on Sunday and Monday, he confused many Italians by citing the language in the decree limiting movement in the north, speaking about an “obligation for all the physical persons who enter or exit the area” to “avoid every movement.” It sounded draconian but allowed for plenty of wiggle room.
Travel continued in and out of the north by car, train and plane. The country’s response remained fragmented. Regions in the middle and south developed their own restrictions, some of them significantly tougher than those on the north.
To help explain the decree, the Interior Ministry published “auto-certification” forms that anyone traveling from or to the locked-down areas needed to fill out and present when asked by the authorities to attest that they needed to travel for work, or health or “other necessities.”
Roberto Burioni, one of Italy’s leading virologists, said that Italy had underestimated the contagiousness of the virus, so the government needed to act decisively and Italians needed to respond responsibly.
“The only way to contain this virus, is to betray our culture which is social,” he said, adding “the virus is exploiting these characteristics, and we have to do everything we can to stop it.”
Mr. Conte clearly counted on, and appealed to, Italy’s sense of civic duty, saying “everyone must do their part” to stop the spread of the virus. “The right decision is to stay home.”
Not long before Mr. Conte spoke, Paola De Caria, 60, returned to her home in Milan from visiting her 90-year-old mother and fighting with a friend who took the virus too lightly. She said she wasn’t “really sure” what the rules were but “it all comes down to common sense. ‘I have an aging parent, I shop for her and bring her food, avoid cafes and places like that.”
Anna Momigliano contributed reporting from Milan, and Emma Bubola and Elisabetta Povoledo from Rome.