Military to enforce coronavirus quarantine in Lombardy as death toll in Italy surges
A man touches the coffin of his mother during a funeral service in the closed cemetery of Seriate, near Bergamo, Lombardy, on March 20, 2020.
Italy announced on Friday that it would call up the military to help enforce the national coronavirus lockdown in the hardest-hit parts of the country as its single-day death toll from the pandemic surged again to the highest recorded so far in any country.
Soldiers will first be deployed only in Lombardy, the hard-hit region where Italy's economic capital Milan sits. But the mobilization could be extended, officials said.
One month after the country's first coronavirus death, Italy recorded 627 coronavirus-related deaths in the last 24 hours, the second time in three days the country saw a new high of mortalities. The total number of deaths in Italy now amounted to 4,032.
Meanwhile, the number of individuals recovered from the disease rose by 689 to 5,129 in total.
Of those infected by the virus in Italy, the vast majority remain in the two most mild categories. Some 19,185 people are recovering at home in isolation, a big jump from 14,935 recorded on Thursday. Another 16,020 are hospitalized with symptoms, a modest increase from 15,757 announced a day earlier.
A total of 2,655 patients are in intensive care, a small increase from 2,498 in the same category a day earlier.
Angelo Borrelli, head of Italy's Civil Protection Department, believed that the peak level of infections in Italy may still be a week or more away, as officials await the effects of the national lockdown that first went into effect on March 10.
"I think we are looking at some time next week or perhaps even the following week until the numbers peak," Borrelli said.
There have been widespread reports in the national media that the terms of the lockdown — which prohibit people from leaving their houses unless it is for "essential" reasons, such as medical visits or a trip to the grocery store or pharmacy — have not been respected strictly enough, especially in northern Italy where more than three in four of Italy's nearly 38,000 active coronavirus cases are located.
On Thursday, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said the terms of the lockdown would be extended beyond their original April 3 deadline.
