Saturday 22 February 2020

ITALY- FIRST EUROPEAN VICTIM DIES FROM CORONAVIRUS


A second patient infected with the new coronavirus has died in Italy, ANSA news agency has reported citing healthcare sources, as an outbreak spreads in the north of the country with at least 17 cases reported so far. The victim was a female resident in Milan's Lombardy region, ANSA said. Her reported death comes hours after a 77-year-old man died overnight near Padua, in the nearby Veneto region. The man was the first European victim of the disease, Italy's health minister has said. Health authorities announced yesterday 15 cases of the virus in the northern region of Lombardy and two in neighbouring Veneto where Padua is located - the first known cases of local transmission in the country.
None of those infected were believed to have travelled to China, the epicentre of the new illness, and local authorities in Italy scrambled to contain the outbreak.
Local media said the dead man was a 77-year-old from the small town of Vo' Euganeo who was hospitalised two weeks ago.
"Strict measures to create a health cordon around Vo'Euganeo (have been put in place)," regional governor Luca Zaia wrote said on Facebook. In neighbouring Lombardy, the government banned all public events and closed schools in several small towns southeast of Italy's financial capital Milan.  "We had prepared a plan in recent days, because it was clear what has happened could somehow happen," Health Minister Roberto Speranza told reporters as doctors tested hundreds of people who might have come into contact with the coronavirus sufferers. Speaking on the margins of a European Union meeting in Brussels before the Italian fatality was announced, prime minister Giuseppe Conte said he would meet the chiefs of Italy's civil protection agency, and that the situation was under control. "We were ready for this (outbreak).. the people have no need to be worried, we will adopt increasingly severe and precautionary measures," he said. Local officials said the first infected patient in Lombardy, a 38-year-old man from the town of Lodi, fell ill after meeting a friend who had recently visited China. That man has since tested negative for the disease, but doctors were investigating whether he carried the virus and subsequently recovered without showing any symptoms, a Lombardy regional councillor said. The pregnant wife of the initial patient and one of his friends were infected, along with three others admitted to hospital overnight suffering from pneumonia-like symptoms. Officials later said five health workers who had come into contact with the virus carriers had themselves fallen ill. Mr Zaia said it was unclear how the two individuals in Veneto might have caught the disease.




"There was certainly no contact with the people infected in Lodi," he said. Prior to yesterday, Italy had reported just three cases of the virus, which first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year. Two Chinese tourists from Wuhan tested positive in Rome in late January, while an Italian who returned home on a special flight repatriating some 56 nationals from the same city was hospitalised a week later. After the first confirmed cases, Italy suspended all direct flights to and from China, provoking the ire of the Chinese government. "Diplomatic and economic issues are fundamental but health comes first," Mr Speranza said as he announced the government's latest measures. All those who have entered Italy after visiting areas in China affected by the coronavirus will have to stay home under surveillance, the health ministry said in a statement. China has had more than 75,400 cases of the coronavirus and 2,236 people have died, most of them in Hubei province and its capital Wuhan. Elsewhere, South Korea has today reported 142 more coronavirus cases, the sharpest spike in infections yet, with more than half of the new cases linked to a hospital in a southern city. The national toll of 346 is now the second-highest outside of China, with the jump in cases at a hospital in Cheongdo following a similar spike among members of a religious sect in the nearby city of Daegu. A repatriation flight carrying 32 British and European passengers evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan landed at Ministry of Defence base Boscombe Down in Wiltshire today, the Foreign Office said. The passengers are being taken by road to Arrowe Park Hospital on the Wirral for 14 days of quarantine to protect against the spread of the illness should any of them be infected. They have so far tested negative for Covid-19. The four British nationals on board the Diamond Princess who have tested positive for coronavirus were not on the flight. Arrowe Park was previously used to host 83 people for a 14-day quarantine period earlier in February after they were flown out of Wuhan.. 
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