Coronavirus: all of Italy on lockdown as country faces ‘darkest hour’

Movement across Italy will be sharply restricted within hours, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte announced on Monday, in an unprecedented clampdown aimed at beating the coronavirus in Europe’s worst-affected country.

Conte told reporters that measures introduced just two days ago in much of the north were no longer sufficient after a jump in deaths tied to the highly infectious disease, and said that the entire nation had to make sacrifices to stop its spread.

“The right decision today is to stay at home. Our future and the future of Italy is in our hands. These hands have to be more responsible today than ever before,” Conte said.

Italy’s 60 million people will only be able to travel for work, medical reasons or emergencies until April 3. All schools and universities, which were closed nationwide last week until March 15, will now not reopen before next month.

The contagion only came to light near Italy’s financial capital Milan on February 21. Since then there have been some 9,172 confirmed cases and 463 deaths, putting the national health system under massive strain.

Earlier on Monday, Conte said that Italy was facing its “darkest hour”, repeating Winston Churchill’s famous words from World War II.

“Over the past days I thought back to about what I read on Churchill: it is our darkest hour but we will make it,” Conte told the La Repubblica newspaper.

“We will not stop here. We will use a massive shock therapy. To come out of this emergency, we will use all human and economic resources,” he said.

Earlier measures to contain the virus, including restrictions on prison visits, had led to unrest in jails across the country, with six inmates killed in a prison riot in Modena and guards taken hostage at another jail in Pavia.

“There have been a series of rebellions across the country,” said the head of Italy’s prison administration Francesco Basentini in a television interview.

Video shown on Italian television showed police and fire trucks outside the prison as black smoke swirled into the sky.

The justice ministry said that fires had been set at a number of prisons causing severe damage.

Sappe, the prison guards union, said that two guards had been taken hostage in the northern city of Pavia and were released after a police raid.

In an emergency decree on Sunday, the government imposed limits on direct contact between inmates and their families. Prisoners will be allowed to contact visitors by phone or other remote methods under the measures, in place until March 22.

Modena and Pavia are within the red zone that the government has established to limit the coronavirus contagion.

Justice ministry sources said two of the deaths in Modena were caused by an overdose from drugs found in the jail infirmaries, while a third prisoner was found blue in the face and the cause of the death was still unclear.

The prison unrest could add to political pressure on the government coalition of the centre-left and the anti-establishment 5-Star movement. Far-right League leader Matteo Salvini said: “The gates of the prisons shouldn’t be thrown open with the excuse of the revolts.”

Coronavirus: empty streets and paranoia as northern Italy endures lockdown, death toll surges

Meanwhile, in Spain, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases almost doubled overnight, with acute concentrations in the capital Madrid and the Basque country.

The number of cases jumped to 999 on Monday from 589 on March 8, the health ministry said.

The Spanish health ministry was holding an emergency meeting with the Madrid regional government to discuss possible reasons for the spike in cases in and around the capital.

Additional reporting by dpa, Bloomberg