Italy coronavirus death toll rises by almost 200 in just 24 hours

The death toll in Italy has risen by almost 200 in 24 hours now totally 827, and the number of confirmed cases has soared to more than 2,000 from, 10,149 to 12,462.

The worst affected area in Italy is the wealthy Lombardy region that has seen 617 deaths.

This week she Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte, has ordered 60m people to stay at home and must get permission for essential travel.

In a TV address to the Italian nation Conte said the emergency measures are to protect the vulnerable and elderly, he said, “there is no more time.”

Conte said the best thing was for people to stay at home. “We’re having an important growth in infection… and of deaths,” he said in an evening address on Monday.

Conte added, “The whole of Italy will become a protected zone.

“We all must give something up for the good of Italy. We have to do it now.

“This is why I decided to adopt even more strong and severe measures to contain the advance… and protect the health of all citizens.”

Professor Neil Ferguson, of Imperial College London’s faculty of medicine has said Italy could have more than 100,000 coronavirus cases.

An Italian doctor who is at the heart of the coronavirus outbreak has spoken out and has said the virus is a “tsunami that has swept us all.”

Dr Daniele Macchini candidly spoke of the huge pressures that health professionals are going through across Italy, which has now been classed as “protected zone.”

Coronavirus is spreading so fast doctors are making comparisons to war time triage medics who are deciding on who lives and who dies as there are limited numbers of beds in the intensive care unit.

Dr Macchini said, “After thinking for a long time if and what to write about what is happening to us, I felt that the silence was not at all responsible.”

He admitted “the need not to create panic” however, “the message of the danger of what is happening” is not reaching people.

Sergio Brusin from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control told the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire programme on Monday, “The UK is in the same situation Italy was two weeks ago.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) has now categorised the deadly coronavirus outbreak as a global pandemic.

WHO director general, Tedors Adhanom Ghebreyesus said we have now rang the “alarm bell.”

Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the WHO said: “WHO has been assessing this outbreak around the clock and we are deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity, and by the alarming levels of inaction.

“We have therefore made the assessment that COVID19 can be characterized as a pandemic.”