Coronavirus: ‘Ill’ Britons returning from Italy told to self-isolate

Public Health England today announced that Britons returning from the whole of Italy are to self-isolate if they develop symptoms of the deadly coronavirus.  

PHE Chief Medical Officer Chris Witty told a press conference today that the current advice for those returning from northern Italy is to be extended to the whole of the country.  

While confirming that the government was still in the phase of containing the virus, entering the delay process is the ‘direction of travel’ for the future, Prof Whitty said. 

Since the coronavirus reached British shores, the government and health bodies have been in the ‘contain’ phase, trying to stop the infection spreading. 

In recent days, with evidence of community transmission, it is thought that PHE will attempt to push a major epidemic back to the summer in the hopes of slowing the rate. COVID-19, which has infected  115 in the  UK, is thought to spread faster in the cold.  

Italy on Thursday reported 41 new deaths from the novel coronavirus, its highest single-day total to date, bringing the number of fatalities in Europe’s most affected country to 148.

The number of cases also jumped by a new high of 769, reaching 3,858 over the past two weeks.

The latest figures mean Italy has the second-most deaths behind China, where the new virus was first detected at the end of last year.

All of Italy’s 22 regions have now been affected, with the data showing the virus had reached the Aosta Valley on the French border. 

The number of COVID-19 patients receiving intensive care also rose to 351 from 295 on Wednesday.

The government has unveiled a series of unprecedented measures aimed at stemming the virus’ accelerating spread.

All schools and universities have been closed until March 15, keeping 8.5 million students at home.

Football matches and other sporting events will be played without fans for a month, and 11 villages with 50,000 residents remain under quarantine for a second week. 

Travel to Italy was first curtailed on 25 February when the Foreign and Commonwealth issued advice for travellers returning from the hardest hit regions in the north of the country. 

Italy closed all schools and universities and prepared other emergency measures on Wednesday to try to slow the spread of the coronavirus in Europe’s worst-hit country as the death toll and number of cases jumped.  

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte’s government released a decree yesterday telling the nation, among other restrictions, that the public should refrain from the traditional Italian greeting of kissing each other on the cheek.    

Among the PM’s rules were the closure of cinemas and theatres, and telling Italians not to shake hands or hug each other and to avoid ‘direct physical contact with all people.’  

Conte last night said the measures were needed to stop its health service from crumbling amid warnings the toll is more severe than currently known.

He said: ‘We are focused on taking all measures for direct containment or delaying the spread of the virus. 

‘The health system risks going into overload, and we will have a problem with intensive care if an exponential crisis continues.’

Cases from Italy have been reported across the world. 

And yesterday two groups of Italian tourists, totalling 15 people, were being held in isolation in India after testing positive for the virus.

The Netherlands last night became the latest country to advise against travelling to the worst affected areas of Italy, while Tunisia stopped ferry services.

Authorities in Rome have created two ‘red zones’ affecting 11 towns with 50,000 people in the wealthy Lombardy and Veneto regions in the north of the country. They are considering extending the zone to the city of Bergamo after a cluster of cases there. 

Education Minister Lucia Azzolina said schools and universities all over the country would be closed from Thursday until at least March 15. 

Only those in the northern regions most heavily affected by the epidemic have been closed so far.

The number of cases since the outbreak surfaced 13 days ago rose to 3,089 from 2,502 on Tuesday. 

Of those who contracted the disease, about 3.5 per cent had died, the head of the agency, Angelo Borrelli, said. 

Mr Conte’s rules also order all major sporting events, including top flight Serie A soccer matches, to be played in empty stadiums.

All sporting events throughout the country must take place behind closed doors until April 3. 

Schools and universities have been ordered to close until March 15.

That calls into question Italy’s Six Nations rugby match against England in Rome on March 14.  

That match will either have to go ahead behind closed doors or be postponed. 

Italy’s match against Ireland, which was scheduled for March 7, had already been postponed.  

The Italian soccer league’s governing body has yet to release a revised schedule but reports say the six Serie A soccer matches that were postponed last week will now be played this weekend. 

That includes one of the biggest matches of the season – the Juventus-Inter game, known as the ‘Derby d’Italia’ or Italy’s derby.

The school closures, however, caused jubilation among some children and mixed reactions from parents.

‘I hoped for this decree because I feared an outbreak at school,’ said Massimiliano Del Ninno, father of a Rome primary school student. 

‘Even if we are dealing with an age group that doesn’t seem to be at risk, they could have been carriers.’  

Clarissa Mazzei, a 30-year-old mother of three, called it ‘tragic … for the students, and also for the parents.’

Deputy Economy Minister Laura Castelli said the government was aware of the problems it would cause families and was preparing a directive to allow a parent to stay home from work to look after children. 

The virus outbreak remains centred on the wealthy and populous region of Lombardy, around Milan, and the neighbouring regions of Veneto and Emilia Romagna, but cases are spreading around the whole of the Italian peninsula and Sicily 

Rome’s Spallanzani infections diseases hospital said it had 20 coronavirus patients, while others were being treated at home in and around Italy’s capital and largest city. 

Emilia Romagna’s regional government said on Wednesday two of its members had tested positive and Industry Minister Stefano Patuanelli is in self-imposed isolation after coming into contact with a patient, though he himself had tested negative.

The outbreak has heavily disrupted daily life in the north, with cinemas and museums closed in some regions and many events cancelled including fashion shows and trade fairs.

On Wednesday, the government instructed public sector managers to reorganise offices to help staff work from home. 

Italy’s chronically weak economic growth looks sure to suffer, with the tourist sector taking a huge hit from a wave of cancellations.

Industry lobby Confindustria said the country was in recession, forecasting a fall in gross domestic product in both the first and second quarters of this year.

Confturismo, the tourist industry’s confederation, said the sector was ‘on its knees.’

It forecast a drop of some 32 million in the number of Italian and foreign tourists in March-to-May, with a loss to the industry of about 7.4 billion euros (£6.4billion).  

Economy Minister Roberto Gualtieri has promised tax breaks and other measures for the affected sectors worth 3.6 billion euros (£3.1billion). 

A government source told Reuters on Wednesday this may be raised to 4.5 billion (£3.5billion), or 0.25 per cent of GDP.

The three northern regions in the ‘red zone’ – Lombardy, Veneto and Emilia-Romagna – have already had their schools closed since last month. 

Ten percent of virus patients in Italy were in intensive care with respiratory problems, the health chief of the Lombardy region in northern Italy has said.

Giulio Gallera said that they were almost exclusively over 65 years old and asked all elderly people in the region to leave home as little as possible for the next two weeks. 

Giovanni Rezza, the head of the infectious diseases department at the national health institute, yesterday said that schools were a key area to keep control of the virus.

‘Not because children are vulnerable – they don’t suffer as much as adults – but they can transmit it to parents and grandparents,’ he said. 

He also had a warning for countries like the UK where the virus is starting to spread, saying: ‘Be very careful and contain clusters as soon as possible.’  

Officials in Italy also said it could take up to two weeks to know whether measures including quarantines in 11 northern towns were working.  

People who have visited all of Italy, Iran, the South Korean cities of Daegu or Cheongdo, are still required to self-isolate at home even if they feel healthy after returning. 

Whereas those coming back from anywhere in Italy that is north of Pisa and Florence, or from Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos or Myanmar should do the same if they start to feel ill.

Professor Whitty said today there was now a ‘slim to zero’ chance that the virus – which has infected more than 96,000 people worldwide – could be stopped. 

And he said elderly people, known to be most likely to die from the coronavirus, did not yet need to batten down the hatches at home and that catching the virus in old age does not mean you would be ‘a goner’.

Phase one of four – ‘contain’ – was intended to isolate small numbers of cases and stop the virus spreading inside the UK but appears to have failed.

Professor Whitty said there was now evidence of community transmission between people who had no connections to overseas cases or returning travellers.

He said: ‘We have moved from a situation where we are mainly in contain, with some delay built in, to we are now mainly delay.’