People walk in an almost empty St. Mark’s Square in Venice, Italy, Monday, March 9, 2020. Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte says he is restricting travel nationwide to try to stop the spread of the new coronavirus. Conte said Monday night a new government decree will require all people in Italy to demonstrate they need to work, have health conditions or other limited legitimate reasons to travel outside their home areas. The battle to halt the coronavirus brought sweeping new restrictions Monday, with Italy expanding a travel ban to the entire country, Israel ordering all visitors quarantined just weeks before Passover and Easter, and Spain closing all schools in and around its capital. Even as workers in Beijing returned to their jobs and new infections in China continued to subside, Italians struggled to navigate the rapidly changing parameters of the nation’s self-imposed lockdown.
The fears fanned by the virus sent Wall Street stocks tumbling to their biggest drop since 2008, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 7.8%. Global oil prices suffered their worst percentage losses since the start of the 1991 Gulf War.
“Now that the virus has a foothold in so many countries, the threat of a pandemic has become very real,” said World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “The great advantage we have is the decisions we all make as governments, businesses, communities, families and individuals can influence the trajectory of this epidemic.” More than 113,000 people have been infected with the virus, and more than 3,900 have died of the COVID-19 illness it causes. Most of the cases are in China, but its proportion is shrinking as the caseload grows elsewhere. More than 62,000 people have already recovered. But Italy’s intensifying struggle to halt the virus’ spread emerged as a cautionary tale. “There won’t be just a red zone,” Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said, in announcing that a lockdown covering about 16 million people in the north would be expanded to the entire country starting Tuesday.
Italian doctors celebrated one small victory after the first patient diagnosed with the illness, a 38-year-old Unilever worker, was moved out of intensive care and began breathing on his own. But the virus’ rapid spread was forcing them to operate like war-time medics, triaging patients to decide who get access to scarce ICU beds.
“Unfortunately we’re only at the beginning,” said Dr. Massimo Galli, head of infectious disease at Milan’s Sacco hospital. Italy’s 9,172 cases and 463 deaths are the second-most in the world. China on Tuesday recorded just 19 new cases over the previous 24 hours, its lowest total since it began reporting national figures on Jan. 20.
Israel will quarantine anyone arriving from overseas for 14 days, a decision coming barely a month before Easter and Passover.
All St. Patrick’s Day parades were canceled in Ireland, including one in Dublin that typically draws half a million to its streets.
All schools in and around Madrid will close for two weeks. The rising number of cases around Spain’s capital “imply a change for the worse,” the country’s Health Minister Salvador Illa said.
In China, the slow emergence from its extreme quarantine measures spotlighted the virus’ continued economic impact. “Our business is one-fifth of what it was before,” said Cheng Sheng, who helps run a stand in Beijing that sells sausages and noodles. “There’s much less foot traffic. There are no people.”
Infections were reported in more than half the world’s countries, and flashpoints were erupting around the globe.