A pharmacist wearing a mask speaks to a customer at the entrance of a pharmacy in the town of Codogno, in northern Italy.
Photo: matteo corner/ShutterstockMILAN—Part of Italy’s economic heartland woke up under a quarantine on Sunday with more than 50,000 people not allowed to leave their towns, as the country began to grapple with the worst coronavirus outbreak outside of Asia.
The first economic effects hit Milan, the engine of Italy’s economy, which is just 40 miles from the outbreak’s epicenter. Trade shows, soccer matches and other public events were canceled. The mayor of Milan, Italy’s second-largest city with about 1.4 million residents, said the city’s schools will be closed for a week.
As of Sunday morning, more than 130 people in Italy had tested positive for the virus, with about 90 of them in Lombardy, the region where Milan is the capital. Two people have died, including one in Lombardy. The number of infected continued to rise on Sunday.
The Latest on the Virus
- Outbreak in Italy leaves two dead and at least 130 people ill; 11 towns in northern Italy have been quarantined
- South Korea reported a jump in new cases, with most linked to a megachurch
- The death toll stands at more than 2,200
- In mainland China, more than 75,000 people have been confirmed infected
- What we know so far
Health officials struggled to explain how in just a few days Italy went from having just three cases, two of them Chinese tourists, to becoming by far Europe’s biggest outbreak. Italian authorities are trying to reconstruct how the outbreak started, a key step necessary to track down all people who might be infected without yet showing symptoms.
One focus is an emergency room in a hospital in Codogno, the town south of Milan at the center of the outbreak. Codogno and nine other nearby towns were put under quarantine Saturday. Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte didn’t say how long the quarantine would last.
A town in Veneto, a region that borders Lombardy, where there is a much smaller cluster of cases, is also quarantined.
The government has ordered police to ensure people in the quarantined towns don’t try to leave, Mr. Conte said. He said that while he is confident people will respect the quarantine, he is ready to call in the armed forces to help the police if necessary.
Mr. Conte said a family in a car had broken the quarantine before police were in place, but had been tracked down. None of the family tested positive for the virus. Mr. Conte didn’t say if they would face any consequences.
In Milan, five hospitals remained on high alert, ready to accept people with respiratory issues. Authorities canceled all large public gatherings in Lombardy, including scheduled soccer matches in Milan and the nearby city of Bergamo. Another match was canceled in Verona, which is in Veneto.
“We need to do everything possible to interrupt the advance of this virus,” Attilio Fontana, the regional president of Lombardy, said in an interview on Sky News. “We don’t want to shut down Milan and Lombardy, but we have to take certain precautions. Life must go on.”
In early February, Italy canceled all flights to and from China, but that didn’t stop the arrival of the virus as people weren’t restricted from connecting to Italy with stopovers in other countries. Mr. Conte pointed to the travel ban as an indication of Italy’s attempt to avoid just the sort of outbreak that has engulfed the country.
Mr. Fontana said that Italy should increase controls at its borders, contradicting Mr. Conte’s decision not to suspend the Schengen Agreement, which allows people to move freely between most European countries without passports or controls.
The outbreak came in the midst of Milan’s women’s fashion week, a key event for one of the city’s most important industries. Armani said it would hold its fashion show behind closed doors on Sunday afternoon. A large trade show for the eyewear industry scheduled to begin at the end of the coming week was canceled.
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Write to Eric Sylvers at eric.sylvers@wsj.com
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