Dazed Italy Bickers and Seeks Reason for Coronavirus Spread
Stunned by Europe’s biggest surge of the coronavirus, Italy appears to be operating in near panic mode.
(Bloomberg) -- Stunned by Europe’s biggest surge of the coronavirus, Italy appears to be operating in near panic mode.
The government imposed a lockdown on an area of 50,000 people near Milan, authorities canceled the remaining days of the Venice Carnival, and universities closed. The Chinatown area in Prato near Florence saw many small businesses close as Chinese nationals voluntarily remained at home for two-week periods.
Matteo Salvini, leader of the League party, used the outbreak to attack Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte for not defending the borders. He cited the docking of the Ocean Viking humanitarian ship in a Sicilian port with 274 African migrants on board to say Italy needs “to make our borders armor-plated.” He called on Conte to resign “if he isn’t able to defend Italy and Italians.”
The rise in infections to around 150 from just a handful a week ago comes at a bad moment for Conte’s administration, already under fire for failing to mount a coherent response to the spread of the virus. As Conte chairs a series of marathon meetings in Rome to counter the spread of the disease, his plan for tax reforms and investments to restart an ailing economy has stalled, and now businesses are set to be affected by measures against the virus.
Italian 10-year government bond yields rose the most in more than a month and the benchmark stocks index fell the most since September 2018 as the government dealt with the spread of the virus. The FTSE MIB was down 4.2% at 9:23 a.m. in Milan.
Conte’s government was censured by Beijing for an early ban on all flights to and from China, a decision criticized by Walter Ricciardi, a member of the World Health Organization’s executive council, because it stopped authorities from tracing arrivals as travelers could use stopovers to reach Italy.
Efforts to contain the coronavirus could have been initially thwarted by difficulty in identifying the roots of the spread.
Almost all of Italy’s cases are linked to a 38-year-old man who sought treatment at a hospital in the Lombardy region on Feb. 18. While there, he infected dozens of patients and medical staff, who then spread it further afield. Tracking efforts initially focuses on a friend of the man, a businessman who had returned from China, but tests proved negative and the origin of the contagion remains a mystery. A fourth death from the virus was reported in Lombardy on Monday, Ansa news agency said.
“Conte is on difficult ground: He’s got to find an explanation for the big spread of the virus,” said Sofia Ventura, a political science professor at Bologna University, which announced it’s closing Monday along with other universities and schools in the northern Emilia-Romagna region.
Conte hasn’t ruled out suspending the Schengen agreement that allows free movement between the borders of European Union members. To guarantee “maximum protection,” the government would take “any measure to safeguard the health of citizens,” he told reporters on the sidelines of a EU summit in Brussels on Friday. The League called for a suspension of Schengen.
Austria’s state railroad temporarily halted traffic from Italy across a key Alpine crossing on Sunday, with a train from Venice to Munich held on the Italian side of the Brenner Pass after authorities received information that two people aboard had flu-like symptoms. Rail traffic had resumed as normal by Monday.
Salvini’s political calculation is clear. While his League is the country’s most popular party, he was interior minister in Conte’s first coalition when his effort last year to force fresh elections backfired. He now has to contend with the resurgence of the right-wing Brothers of Italy party, which has leapfrogged ex-Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia.
“Borders are the perfect issue for Salvini, and he’s out for revenge, with his ally and rival Giorgia Meloni of the Brothers of Italy party rising in opinion polls,” said Ventura of Bologna University.
In his Facebook video, Salvini zeroed in on African migrants like the ones who landed in Sicily, saying “God forbid” one of them turned out to be a virus-carrier.
Conte and Salvini skirmished over the spread of the virus, with the premier saying on La7 television that the only leader he had not managed to reach to discuss the issue was Salvini despite phoning him and sending him a message. “If he’d had the goodness to reply, I’d have explained to him why more severe measures couldn’t be taken earlier,” Conte said.
At the port of Pozzallo, the latest migrants to attempt the deadly journey from north Africa were placed in isolation on Sunday, while the crew were confined to the ship. None of the cases in Italy so far have been linked to African migrants.
Health authorities still don’t know the origin of the disease’s spread, according to emergency commissioner Angelo Borrelli.
“It’s difficult to express forecasts for the spread,” he said. “The only concrete and valid measure to be taken is therefore the one of closing off territories.”
Conte himself was left acknowledging that he hadn’t expected the surge.
“I was surprised by this explosion of cases, which had been kept under control until a short time ago,” he told RAI television Sunday. But he insisted: “The line of maximum precaution has paid off, even though it doesn’t appear so.”
--With assistance from Alessandro Speciale, Marco Bertacche and Chiara Remondini.
To contact the reporters on this story: John Follain in Rome at jfollain2@bloomberg.net;Jerrold Colten in Milan at jcolten@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, Karl Maier, Andrew Davis
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