A friend of mine is reporting that some European news outlets

[lapfog_1]

are saying that all travel to/from Italy is suspended, airports, ferries, cruise ships, cars.

No direct source so can't be latest breaking news.

And her English is, shall we say, limited so she might have misunderstood the report.

On the other hand, all schools are closed in her country come Wednesday.

[Thekaspervote]

1. The Italian premier has locked down the whole country

They went from approx 150 cases to 3,000+

[Totally Tunsie]

7. The current count for Italy is now at 9,172 with 463 deaths!

http://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

[Recursion]

2. The country is locked down as of today

Nobody in or out; everybody stay in their current town.

[WilmywoodNCparalegal]

4. The reports are correct

Source: Italian press, press conference by PM

What happened is when news of the quarantine zones came out, lots of people decided to 'escape' further south and/or in non-quarantined areas.

So, the Italian government and health services decided to take this drastic step to reduce the risk of contagion, since they could no longer isolate the most affected areas.

Keep in mind that Italy is second only to Japan for the average age of its citizens. Since COVID-19 seems to affect older people the most, this is a wise move.

Also, unlike the U.S., testing for COVID-19 is relatively easy to come by and plenty of testing is being done.

[Lindsay]

5. I haven't seen anything about travel, specifically,

but the Italian PM has extended the orders for northern Italy to the entire country - no public gatherings, only essential travel for work and health reasons.

Link to tweet

(This twitter feed has a bit more specific information, but just a bit.)

[thecrow]

6. Yes it's true.

My friends are over there, not even in the hot zone.
They were cutting their trip short and coming home this weekend.
Now they can’t leave!