Italy enforces emergency measures nationwide as Covid-19 rockets

The 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.

He estimates that are at least 50,000 to 100,000 of coronavirus across the country, which is the worst affected country in western Europe.

The death rate has doubled over night to 463, which is around 5% and 9,172 people are confirmed to be infected and 724 people have recovered.

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.”