Italy’s coronavirus outbreak is keeping Americans from booking European travel, new data shows

By Hannah Sampson @ WashingtonPost.com, March 5

Travelers around the world appear to be holding off on planning new trips to Italy as the number of coronavirus infections continues to rise.

According to the travel analytics company ForwardKeys, flight bookings to Italy fell by nearly 139 percent in the final week of February, compared with a year ago [....]

Many are going to hafta wash their hands directly after voting:

Feel sorry for kids at expensive colleges that are going virtual. They fought so hard (morally or immorally) to get in and now it's as if they stayed home and pursued an online degree. A lesson in itself, I guess, that you can't plan your life! It's a crap shoot.

Quarter of Italy's population put in quarantine as virus reaches Washington DC plus some endtime-style updates on UK, Australia, China; my underlining

Giuseppe Conte signs decree early on Sunday after 1,200 cases confirmed in 24 hours

Helen Davidson, Lorenzo Tondo , Verna Yu and agencies @ TheGuardian.com, March 8

Italy has formally locked down more than a quarter of its population in a bid to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus, as the outbreak reached Washington DC and a political convention attended by Donald Trump and Mike Pence.

More than 5,800 cases of Covid-19 have been confirmed in Italy, after an alarming increase of more than 1,200 in a single 24-hour period. Two hundred and thirty-three people have died. Almost 100 countries are now responding to outbreaks.

In the early hours of Sunday, Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte signed a decree enacting forced quarantine for the region of Lombardy – home to more than 10 million people and the financial capital, Milan – and multiple other provinces, totalling around 16 million residents.

Affected provinces include Venice, Modena, Parma, Piacenza, Reggio Emilia, Rimini, Pesaro and Urbino, Alessandria, Asti, Novara, Verbano Cusio Ossola, Vercelli, Padua, and Treviso.

The lockdown decree includes the power to impose fines on anyone caught entering or leaving Lombardy, the worst-affected region, until 3 April. It provides for the banning of all public events, closing cinemas, theatres, gyms, discos and pubs. Religious ceremonies such as funerals and weddings will also be prohibited, and leave for healthcare workers has been cancelled [....]

In the UK, the government is preparing its own emergency response measures, including emergency legislation allowing people to switch jobs and volunteer to work in the NHS or care homes, and for courts to use telephone and video links.

The banning of people over 70 attending public events is also reportedly being considered by the Cobra emergency committee, which meets on Monday [....]

Australian authorities are also searching for people, including government employees, who came into contact with two defence force personnel since diagnosed with the virus. Three people have died in the country, with more than 70 confirmed cases. On Sunday, the federal health minister urged people to avoid panic buying, which has seen two people charged for fighting over toilet paper.

The rate of new infections in China, where the outbreak began, has slowed.

But Professor Yuen Kwok-yung from the University of Hong Kong, who has been advising authorities on control measures in the city, said the worry for mainland China and Hong Kong was reverse-imported cases, and urged Hongkongers to avoid travel until the end of the year.

“We think the epidemic will probably not come to an end,” Yuen said. “There will be what we call reversed imported cases. In the beginning other countries feared us, now we fear them [for bringing in the virus].” [....]