Italy shuts down most businesses as death toll soars

ROME • All non-essential businesses throughout Italy were shut yesterday until April 3, after the country saw another record coronavirus toll that brought its fatalities to 4,825 - more than a third of the world's total - with 793 more deaths last Saturday.

"The decision taken by the government is to close down all productive activity throughout the territory that is not strictly necessary, crucial, indispensable, to guarantee us essential goods and services," Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said in a dramatic late-night TV address last Saturday.

He stressed that supermarkets and pharmacies would remain open, but did not spell out what "indispensable" companies were.

"We will slow down the country's productive engine, but we will not stop it," Mr Conte added.

The latest restriction in Italy was a grim reminder that the pandemic remains out of control in the European nation that has been the worst-hit by the coronavirus since it first emerged in China late last year.

Italy has notched a rapid succession of records that seemed unimaginable since a retired builder became the first person in Europe to die of the new illness exactly a month ago.

Last Thursday, the country overtook China as the global epicentre of Covid-19. It reported another 1,420 deaths on Friday and Saturday that took its total higher than that reported by China and Iran, the nation with the third-most official fatalities. Medical experts question Iran's transparency and speculate that its toll might be higher.

Italian health officials looked stony-faced as they read out the latest bad news in a daily update on the country's deadliest and most transformative crisis since World War II.

National Health Institute chief Silvio Brusaferro urged the elderly to stay indoors at all times because the average age of Italy's victims was 78.5. "If you do not follow all the (government) measures, you make everything more difficult," Italy's top medical expert said. "If you do, we can make this outbreak slow down."

But the Italian government appears intent on making everyone stay indoors as much as possible at any cost. Police squads in Rome were checking documents and fining those outside their homes without a valid excuse.

Shoppers were forced to wait in line to make sure each store was filled with only a handful of people at any one time. Joggers were asked to limit their runs to laps around the block. And those out for a walk were fined if they broke the rules and wandered into a park or stopped to take pictures of an emptied city.

Mr Conte's government is betting that this approach - and its accompanying concession that the economy will suffer extraordinary short-term pain - will ultimately prevail. The problem for Mr Conte is that it is not working yet.

The number of Covid-19 infections rose last Saturday by 6,557 to 53,578 - yet another record that beat one set only the day before.

Italy's first weeks of the crisis were marked by periodic record death tolls that would be registered twice or three times a week.

The country has been setting records every day since last Wednesday and the jumps are getting exponentially bigger.

The total number of fatalities in the northern Lombardy regions around Milan has passed 3,000.

Lombardy, at the centre of the outbreak in Italy, has been under lockdown since March 8 and the government had hoped to see results there first.

The region of around 10 million reported 3,251 new infections last Saturday. It had reported 2,380 infections on Friday.

The government has sent in the army to enforce the lockdown in the region, where bodies have piled up in churches. Last Friday night, the authorities tightened the nationwide lockdown, closing parks, and banning outdoor activities including walking or jogging far from home.

"The situation is getting worse," Lombardy governor Attilio Fontana was quoted as saying by Italy's Sky TG24 late last Saturday.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, REUTERS