Italy exceeds 10,000 coronavirus cases as infections spike across European nations: ‘The new China is Europe’ - Fox News

As Italy surpassed more than 10,000 coronavirus cases on Wednesday, health officials described Europe as the new ground zero for the disease, with infections spiking in several nations on the European continent.

“Right now, the epicenter – the new China – is Europe,” said Robert Redfield, the head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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The hardest-hit of any country outside of China, where the outbreak began late last year, has been Italy. Authorities confirmed 631 deaths from the COVID-19 virus, and of those deaths, 168 were reported within a 24-hour period on Tuesday, the first day of a country-wide lockdown for its population of 62 million.

A woman walks past the Basilica of Santo Stefano, in Bologna on Wednesday following a country-wide lockdown. (Massimo Paolone/LaPresse via AP)

As the lockdown aimed to keep people home, the number of infections saw a 10 percent increase on Wednesday from the day before.

City streets in Rome and Milan, usually bustling with a mix of tourists and local residents, were largely empty and silent as Italians adapted to their new social habits.

"One of the problems is that Italians are not used to being physically separated," John Hooper, a correspondent for The Economist in Italy, told Sky News. "So that's much more of a cultural shock here than would be in Germany."

Two people sit by the Barcaccia fountain near almost empty Spanish Steps, in Rome on Tuesday. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Premier Giuseppe Conte on Wednesday said he will consider requests to toughen Italy's already extraordinary anti-virus lockdown.

Adding to its efforts, the Italian government also announced a $28 billion allocation to fight the outbreak on both medical and economic fronts. The first measures, expected to be outlined Friday, will support health services, the civil protection agency and the labor market.

The Vittorio Emanuele shopping arcade appeared almost desert in Milan on Wednesday as Italy mulls even tighter restrictions on daily life. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

Other European nations are issuing measures to slow down and control the spread of the virus, and provide a cushion for the “economic shock” of the outbreak.

Spain

Spain's coronavirus cases have surpassed 2,000, with roughly half of them in the Madrid region, where two-thirds of the country’s 47 virus-related deaths have occurred, the Health Ministry said Wednesday.

The number of cases saw a 60 percent increase since Tuesday.

US TOURISTS QUARANTINED IN SPANISH HOTEL AFTER TESTING POSITIVE FOR CORONAVIRUS: HEALTH OFFICIALS

Madrid’s fatalities are high because much of the contagion there is taking place in nursing homes, said Fernando Simón, director of Spain's health emergency center.

Empty shelves are seen in a supermarket as people begin to stock up on provisions in Madrid on Tuesday. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

Schools and universities in Madrid and two northern regions have been ordered to close for two weeks to help slow the outbreak’s spread. Workers were urged to telecommute to help reduce crowds on public transit.

Denmark

The Scandinavian country saw a 191 percent spike in coronavirus cases, with 90 more infections confirmed on Wednesday, for a total of at least 262.

DENMARK SEES FIRST CORONAVIRUS CASE IN MAN RETURNING FROM ITALY VACATION

Denmark’s leaders have advised the public to avoid using public transportation, while some schools also closed, Local Denmark reported.

Health officials also have advised against shaking hands, a measure that has suspended naturalization ceremonies, which require a mandatory handshake by law, The New York Times reported.

Germany

With at least 1,300 infections as of Wednesday, Germany so far has only three deaths — a low rate that experts attribute to rapid testing as the outbreak unfolded.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel issued a warning, citing expert estimates that up to 70 percent of the population could be infected with the virus.

HOW IS GERMANY CONTROLLING THE CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK?

“You have to understand that if the virus is there, and the population has no immunity yet to this virus, there are no vaccines and no therapy so far, a high percentage – experts say 60 to 70 percent – of the population will be infected," Merkel said.

People stand in front of containers with a banner reading "Coronavirus Diagnosis Base" on the grounds of the University Hospital in Mannheim, Germany, on Wednesday. (Uwe Anspach/dpa via AP)

While the government has recommended the cancellation of all events with more than 1,000 people, among other things, Germany intends to keep its borders open.

Merkel said that border closures “are not an appropriate response” to the sweeping outbreak, arguing that it makes more sense for people arriving from badly hit regions to self-quarantine.

United Kingdom

Britain had at least 373 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and six deaths as of Wednesday.

National Health Service England said it would ramp up capacity to test people for the virus, meaning 10,000 tests per day could be carried out. Currently, capabilities allow for only 1,500 tests per day.

United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom Woody Johnson, right, greets by bumping elbows as he arrives to attend the annual Commonwealth Day service at Westminster Abbey in London on Monday. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein)

So far, the government has warned Britons against all but essential travel to Italy and encouraged 14 days of self-isolation for anyone entering the country from the impacted region.

The Bank of England slashed its key interest rate by half a percentage point to 0.25 percent on Wednesday, saying it is part of an emergency package of measures to “help support businesses and consumer confidence at a difficult time.”

Health Minister Nadine Dorries said Tuesday she was self-isolating after testing positive for the virus. Over the last week, she met hundreds of people in Parliament and attended a Women’s Day reception with Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

France

The coronavirus has affected at least 1,700 in France, causing 33 deaths.

France has banned events of more than 1,000 people and advised voters to bring their own pens to local elections Sunday so they won't have to share as part of efforts to limit the spread of the coronavirus.

A general view of signs about coronavirus in the city of Mulhouse, eastern France, on Monday. (AP Photo/Jean-Francois Badias)

Authorities are requisitioning all face masks to reserve them for those infected with the virus and health workers, President Emmanuel Macron said Tuesday.

Belgium

The health ministry announced Wednesday the country's first death related to the coronavirus. The patient was a 90-year-old woman.

Belgium has at least 314 confirmed cases of COVID-19, but the ministry predicted that more cases would soon emerge, saying hospitals are seeing more and more people with respiratory infections.

Schools have remained open so far, but the elderly and those with underlying health conditions are being urged to avoid public transportation.

Poland and Ukraine

Ukraine has at least one confirmed case of the virus, while Poland has at least 26 confirmed cases as of Wednesday.

Even though the two Eastern European nations each have a small number of coronavirus cases, officials ordered all schools, preschools and universities closed as part of preventative measures to slow the outbreak they've seen rapidly spread among their European neighbors.

Poland further shut down all cinemas, theaters and museums for two weeks, Reuters reported.

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“We are in a very difficult situation, but we see on the example of Italy that this position may be much more difficult,” Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said at a news conference.

Fox News' Danielle Wallace and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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2020-03-11 15:44:03Z
CBMiP2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmZveG5ld3MuY29tL3dvcmxkL2l0YWx5LWNvcm9uYXZpcnVzLWV1cm9wZS1vdXRicmVha9IBQ2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmZveG5ld3MuY29tL3dvcmxkL2l0YWx5LWNvcm9uYXZpcnVzLWV1cm9wZS1vdXRicmVhay5hbXA

China shuts all 16 temporary coronavirus hospitals in Wuhan - New York Post

In a dramatic sign that the coronavirus crisis is improving in China, the last two of 16 temporary hospitals in the epicenter city of Wuhan have been shut down, according to a report.

The final group of 49 patients walked out of the Wuchang temporary hospital in the capital of Hubei province on Tuesday afternoon to cheers, according to the Xinhua news agency.

The 784-bed facility — which was converted from Wuchang Hongshan Stadium — opened Feb. 5 and received a total of 1,124 patients, according to the news outlet, which said 833 were discharged and 291 were transferred to other hospitals.

Meanwhile, a makeshift hospital in Wuhan’s Jiangxia District also was shuttered Thursday after 26 days of operation, Xinhua reported. It had received a total of 564 patients, 392 of whom were discharged after recovering.

Zhang Boli, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said the 16 temporary hospitals had received a total of 13,000 coronavirus patients.

Despite the closures, Wuhan — a city of 11 million — remains under lockdown after more than 50 days.

On Tuesday, President Xi Jinping made a high-profile visit to the stricken city, his first since the outbreak began.

Almost 50,000 coronavirus cases have been reported in Wuhan, with 2,423 deaths.

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2020-03-11 14:34:37Z
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Beijing to quarantine all international arrivals as coronavirus cases rise - New York Post

Beijing on Wednesday ordered people arriving from all other countries into a 14-day quarantine as China — where the coronavirus outbreak first began — is now seeing an increase in imported cases.

Zhang Qiang, a city government official, said at a Wednesday press conference that even those landing from “non-epidemic countries” will need to go into a 14-day quarantine.

The sprawling capital city had already required quarantine for people arriving from hard-hit countries including South Korea, Iran, Italy and Japan.

China’s President Xi Jingping visited Wuhan — the original epicenter of COVID-19 — on Tuesday and declared that it had “basically curbed” the spread of the disease.

The number of new infections had been on the downturn in recent weeks, but saw a slight uptick Wednesday because of an increase in imported cases.

Travelers arriving in Beijing for business trips must stay in a designated hotel and undergo a nucleic acid test for the virus, Zhang said.

People flying into Beijing Capital International Airport from high-risk countries are now handled separately from other arrivals, state media reported Tuesday.

Flights from Italy, Iran, South Korea and Japan will arrive at a designated area of the terminal, an airport staff member told Agence France-Presse Wednesday.

Travelers needing to be quarantined will be sent to the nearby New China International Exhibition Center, the staffer said.

Cases in Wuhan fell to a new low Wednesday, with 13 infections reported Wednesday, and only one other non-imported case recorded elsewhere in the country.

Wuhan and the surrounding province of Hubei have been under lockdown since late January in an unprecedented effort to keep 56 million people from traveling to other parts of China.

Twenty-two more deaths and 24 new cases were reported nationwide Wednesday, according to the National Health Commission.

Ten of those cases came from abroad — the majority from Italy, which has seen the greatest number of infections outside China.

In total, China has now reported 79 coronavirus cases imported from abroad.

Overall, 81,000 people have been infected in China since the start of the outbreak, with a large majority already recovered. A total of 3,158 people had died by Wednesday.

The outbreak has spread to over 100 countries, and killed more than 4,000 worldwide.

With Post wires

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2020-03-11 13:06:00Z
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Russian parliament backs changes allowing Putin to run again for president - Reuters

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Constitutional changes allowing Vladimir Putin to run for president again in 2024 sailed through Russia’s lower house of parliament on Wednesday, opening the way for him to potentially stay in power until 2036.

Screens display the vote results during a session of Russia's lower house of parliament, which give an approval to constitutional changes in a final reading in Moscow, Russia March 11, 2020. REUTERS/Evgenia Novozhenina

Putin, 67, who has dominated the Russian political landscape for two decades as either president or prime minister, made a dramatic appearance in the chamber a day earlier to argue that term limits were less important in times of crisis.

Putin, a former KGB officer, is currently required by the constitution to step down in 2024 when his second sequential and fourth presidential term ends. But the amendment which he backed would formally reset his presidential term tally to zero.

The 450-seat State Duma, the lower house of parliament, on Wednesday voted in favor of the change, along with other amendments to the constitution, by 383 votes, in a third and final reading. Nobody voted against, but 43 lawmakers abstained. Twenty-four lawmakers were absent.

If, as Putin critics expect, the constitutional court now gives its blessing to the amendment and it is backed in a nationwide vote in April, Putin would have the option to run again for president in 2024.

Were he to do that, and his health and electoral fortunes allowed, he could potentially stay in office for another two back-to-back six-year terms until 2036 at which point he would be 83 and have spent 36 years at the top of Russian politics.

Kremlin critic and opposition politician Alexei Navalny has said he believes Putin will now try to become president for life.

Putin has not spelled out what his plans for the future are after 2024, but has said he does not favor the Soviet-era practice of having leaders for life who die in office.

PROTEST PICKETS

Putin in January unveiled a major shake-up of Russian politics and a constitutional overhaul, which the Kremlin billed as a redistribution of power from the presidency to parliament.

But Putin’s critics say the reform was merely a smoke screen to give the country’s ruling elite a way to keep Putin in power after 2024.

Opposition activists have said they plan to organize protests as early as Friday against the move to allow Putin to stay on. Their plans are complicated however by an order from Moscow’s government which has banned public gatherings of more than 5,000 people until April 10 due to coronavirus-related risks.

Two people staged lone pickets outside the State Duma on Wednesday. One of them Gleb Tumanov, 31, said he was a member of the Yabloko party, and held a banner calling the move “an usurpation of power.”

“I’m here because of Vladimir Putin’s desire to stay for a fifth term or even maybe a sixth,” said Tumanov.

“It just feels sad. And reminiscent of the Soviet Union. I didn’t spend very much time living in the Soviet Union obviously but neither do I have any desire to do so.”

The changes backed by the State Duma on Wednesday will now be reviewed by other parts of the Russian legislative branch, including by Russia’s upper house of parliament later on Wednesday. No significant opposition is expected.

Additional reporting by Andrey Kuzmin, Alexander Marrow and Anton Zverev; editing by Philippa Fletcher

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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2020-03-11 11:40:59Z
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Russian parliament backs changes allowing Putin to run again for president - Reuters

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Constitutional changes allowing Vladimir Putin to run for president again in 2024 sailed through Russia’s lower house of parliament on Wednesday, opening the way for him to potentially stay in power until 2036.

Screens display the vote results during a session of Russia's lower house of parliament, which give an approval to constitutional changes in a final reading in Moscow, Russia March 11, 2020. REUTERS/Evgenia Novozhenina

Putin, 67, who has dominated the Russian political landscape for two decades as either president or prime minister, made a dramatic appearance in the chamber a day earlier to argue that term limits were less important in times of crisis.

Putin, a former KGB officer, is currently required by the constitution to step down in 2024 when his second sequential and fourth presidential term ends. But the amendment which he backed would formally reset his presidential term tally to zero.

The 450-seat State Duma, the lower house of parliament, on Wednesday voted in favor of the change, along with other amendments to the constitution, by 383 votes, in a third and final reading. Nobody voted against, but 43 lawmakers abstained. Twenty-four lawmakers were absent.

If, as Putin critics expect, the constitutional court now gives its blessing to the amendment and it is backed in a nationwide vote in April, Putin would have the option to run again for president in 2024.

Were he to do that, and his health and electoral fortunes allowed, he could potentially stay in office for another two back-to-back six-year terms until 2036 at which point he would be 83 and have spent 36 years at the top of Russian politics.

Kremlin critic and opposition politician Alexei Navalny has said he believes Putin will now try to become president for life.

Putin has not spelled out what his plans for the future are after 2024, but has said he does not favor the Soviet-era practice of having leaders for life who die in office.

PROTEST PICKETS

Putin in January unveiled a major shake-up of Russian politics and a constitutional overhaul, which the Kremlin billed as a redistribution of power from the presidency to parliament.

But Putin’s critics say the reform was merely a smoke screen to give the country’s ruling elite a way to keep Putin in power after 2024.

Opposition activists have said they plan to organize protests as early as Friday against the move to allow Putin to stay on. Their plans are complicated however by an order from Moscow’s government which has banned public gatherings of more than 5,000 people until April 10 due to coronavirus-related risks.

Two people staged lone pickets outside the State Duma on Wednesday. One of them Gleb Tumanov, 31, said he was a member of the Yabloko party, and held a banner calling the move “an usurpation of power.”

“I’m here because of Vladimir Putin’s desire to stay for a fifth term or even maybe a sixth,” said Tumanov.

“It just feels sad. And reminiscent of the Soviet Union. I didn’t spend very much time living in the Soviet Union obviously but neither do I have any desire to do so.”

The changes backed by the State Duma on Wednesday will now be reviewed by other parts of the Russian legislative branch, including by Russia’s upper house of parliament later on Wednesday. No significant opposition is expected.

Additional reporting by Andrey Kuzmin, Alexander Marrow and Anton Zverev; editing by Philippa Fletcher

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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2020-03-11 10:52:12Z
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Putin backs amendment that could see him run Russia until 2036 - CNN

Under current Russian law, Putin is required to step down as president in 2024, when his second consecutive term in office comes to an end.

The proposed constitutional amendment was brought by MP Valentina Tereshkova, a loyal Putin supporter, and called for the presidential term limit to either be scrapped or simply for Putin to be allowed to run for president again.

Tereshkova added her proposal to a package of other constitutional amendments just 20 minutes before MPs voted on a slew of sweeping constitutional reforms.

The amendments will go through two more rounds of approval in parliament Wednesday. They are seen as largely arbitrary procedures, and will need to get clearance from the Constitutional Court before they are put to the Russian people in a public vote on April 22.

Putin backed the proposed amendment ahead of the vote.

"The second proposal, which means removing obstacles for any Russian citizen, including the incumbent president, and allowing them to run in the next presidential election ... this would be possible in principle but only if the Constitutional Court officially rules that this is not against the main law," Putin said in his address to the Duma.

Putin had previously said he would abide by the law and step down in 2024.

The development comes two months after the entire Russian government resigned to clear the way for a raft of constitutional amendments proposed by Putin which were widely seen as a ploy for him to extend his decades-long grip on power.

Tereshkova, a cosmonaut who became the first woman in space, was more overt about her proposal's intentions on Tuesday, saying it was aimed at keeping Putin in power to promote stability in Russia.

"Why try to be disingenuous or overthink it? People are worried about what's going to happen after 2024 and I understand them. This is not a matter of just the presidential post but also about the person who is trusted and who made decisions in the toughest situations and answered for them, that people could count on. Whatever people say publicly for political reasons, I'm sure everyone in this room too deep down understands this and agrees with me," she said.

"I don't know if the president is ready to run in that election but what I know for sure is that the very existence of this possibility for the current president, given his huge authority, is a stabilizing factor for our society."

Putin is serving his fourth term as president. He ruled Russia from 2000 to 2008 in two consecutive runs, and again in 2012 until now. He served as prime minister in 1999 to 2000, and also in between his two presidential terms, a period in which he was seen to have more power than his allied president at the time, Dmitry Medvedev.

Putin has enjoyed high approval ratings in Russia over his long tenure, but in the past two years his popularity has dropped over his pension reforms and the country's stagnating economy.

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2020-03-10 15:54:58Z
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Health expert: 'Coronavirus lethality in Italy higher than China' - Al Jazeera English

Rome, Italy - A few minutes after Italy announced unprecedented travel restrictions on its 60 million people on Monday to control the deadly coronavirus outbreak in the country, Al Jazeera talked to Nino Cartabellotta, a leading Italian public health expert, professor and president of Gruppo Italiano per la Medicina Basata sulle Evidenze or GIMBE - Italy's Group for Evidence-based Medicine. 

"Finally, the decision has been taken," Cartabellotta said in an interview by phone, welcoming the extension of the quarantine zone to all of the country.

"It was about time. This is the only way we can tackle the spread of the virus effectively."

His research institute has been gathering data and following the coronavirus outbreak since its onset in China and belongs to a taskforce recently set up to advise Italy's Ministry of Health.

Cartabellotta has been vocal throughout the epidemic, calling for strict containment measures to be implemented since late February.

Al Jazeera: How has the virus has spread so quickly?

Nino Cartabellotta: We noticed that the virus had first extended across the Hubei province, then to its provincial neighbours, and eventually across China. We knew the same dynamic would have repeated in other countries. The more days that passed, the clearer it became that the virus would have reached everywhere, thanks to its high transmissibility and through asymptomatic cases.

The virus arrived in Italy most likely in the first or second week of January, much before the closure of the country's air traffic from and to China on January 30, when people still thought suspending flights might have spared us the infection.

Al Jazeera: Some say the current lockdown should have been implemented earlier. Has a delay made the situation more critical? 

Cartabellotta: Following the announcement of the first few cases in Italy, we immediately understood we would have gone through such a vast epidemic. The COVID-19 outbreak was driven by the spread in hospitals in Italy. In such cases, the number of infected patients skyrockets very fast.

Before Monday, measures had been taken in fits and starts because of political and economic factors amid an attempt to protect the national economy, without considering in full all the evaluations that we had presented at the institutional level.

Italian politics took a wait-and-see approach. More or less rigorous measures have been taken based on what was unfolding on the ground. But the virus doesn't work this way. The virus moves extremely quickly.

We would have needed to take such draconian containment measures for the whole country since March 1. It doesn't make sense to put regional, provincial or city borders in such a situation. A policy of procrastination is not a solution amid an epidemic.

[Courtesy: Nino Cartabellotta]

But Europe is just doing the same. There hasn't been any coordination at the European level on this issue, no preparation plan in case of a pandemic neither at the national nor at the bloc level. I'm not aware of any European country having a plan against a pandemic ready to be rolled out.

Policies like those implemented by China's ruling Communist Party that closed down Hubei for about three weeks are those that really pay off at the moment. We are seeing their positive results as China is now getting out of the tunnel. All other partial containment measures are not proportioned to the speed of the virus.

Politics hasn't understood how this virus spreads yet. Each country thought of itself as being immune from the infection, as if the virus would have never reached its borders.

Decisions are simply taken as events precipitate.

Al Jazeera: How will Italy's health system cope?

Cartabellotta: I am very worried about the resilience of our healthcare system. All measures of social containment are meant to slow down the spread of the virus and distribute the emergence of new cases over a longer period. This could give the health system time to prepare. But this was not possible to do in Lombardy and I fear that we won't be able to prevent the infection escalation also in the other regions.

Italian citizens have been completely undisciplined, the government has been playing at drawing new hypothetical borders on a map, depending on the daily increment of the number of cases. We never acted with a clear goal of preventing the infection from spreading. We have already problems in the south to carry out normal healthcare routines, let's not even talk about coping with an epidemic of this sort. I fear we will witness a very high number of deaths.

Al Jazeera: How would you characterise the current situation?

Cartabellotta: We have been seeing an ever-growing increase of the number of cases in other regions as of March 1. So far, there hasn't been any positive effect resulting from the containment measures previously implemented. Based on the data we gathered, we are recording a daily increase of the cases by 25 percent. Until the moment that the containment measures start showing some results, this rate will stay pretty much stable, unless a new vast outbreak emerges.

Lethality in Italy is higher than China because we are only doing swab tests on patients with symptoms, while we have estimated that asymptomatic cases might be around 15,000 at the moment. We are just scratching the surface of the virus diagnostics here. Also, the 6.1 percent lethality rate registered in Lombardy, shows that the healthcare system no longer holds. More people are dying because the system is saturated.

Al Jazeera: Are you suggesting containment measures are ineffective?

Cartabellotta: Draconian measures are always effective. Still, we cannot predict to what extent, as we don't know how widespread the virus is, especially in Italy's central and southern regions. It is important that other countries understand that the later they implement severe measures, the fewer the results. Every day of delay creates more infected, patients in need of ICUs and deaths. China taught us this.

Al Jazeera: Has Italy ever dealt with a similar crisis?

Cartabellotta: Italy never faced such an epidemic in recent history. This is not comparable to what happened during the 2003 SARS outbreak. There is a generational lack of preparation to fight and handle a pandemic. The absence of a plan set in place will also completely wear out our public healthcare system, which has been already severely hit by cuts and lack of investment in the past decade.

Al Jazeera: What should be done in case containment measures do not work?

Cartabellotta: There are no other measures available. Everyone should stay home and obediently and completely stick to all the behavioural rules given by the government. European countries should also implement our stringent measures as soon as possible, as a similar destiny is coming to their doors. The longer we wait the higher the number of deaths.

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2020-03-10 15:53:59Z
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