Europe battles to contain coronavirus as Germany warns of ‘start of an epidemic’

Germany and France have warned of the ‘start of an epidemic’ as Europe scrambles to contain a coronavirus outbreak spreading from Italy across the continent.  

Denmark, Switzerland, Romania, North Macedonia and the city of Athens have all confirmed their first virus cases in the last two days – all of them linked to Italy. 

Supermarket shelves were left empty in Italy and Romania as panicking shoppers rushed to prepare for a quarantine. 

In Germany, hundreds of people were quarantined in their homes today amid fears that a critically sick local patient could have infected countless others. 

The man had attended Carnival parties, visited the Netherlands and gone for an unrelated hospital check-up in the days before he was taken seriously ill.  

A soldier in the German air force has also tested positive after having contact with the man, whose wife works at a kindergarten and also has the virus. 

Separately, a train was stopped for around two hours in Germany on Wednesday with a fleet of emergency workers descending on a remote station after a passenger returning from Italy showed possible virus symptoms on board. 

The country’s health minister Jens Spahn warned yesterday that ‘we are at the beginning of a coronavirus epidemic in Germany’. 

French president Emmanuel Macron echoed those fears today, declaring that ‘we are facing an epidemic’.  

‘We are facing a crisis, an epidemic that is coming,’ Macron said while visiting staff at the La Pitie-Salpetriere hospital in Paris today.

‘We know that we’re only at the beginning… we’re going to try with all our caretakers to make the right decisions.

‘You had a case here… I know this affected many of your teams,’ he said, after a 60-year-old teacher who had not travelled to an outbreak hotspot died at the hospital on Tuesday. 

Spahn, the German health minister, said today that the country had plans in place for a pandemic but warned that ‘we don’t practise them often enough in this country’.  

In another sign of the widespread concern today, the Pope cancelled an event at a Rome basilica after feeling sick. 

The 83-year-old pontiff was seen coughing and blowing his nose during the Ash Wednesday Mass yesterday when he shook hands with the faithful and voiced his sympathy with virus patients. 

There was no word from the Vatican about the nature of his illness, except to say that he was staying in his residence because of a ‘slight indisposition’. 

Denmark confirmed its first case of the virus early today, saying a man who returned from a skiing trip in northern Italy had tested positive. 

‘The man who came back from a skiing trip with his wife and son on February 24 has been suffering since then from a cough and a temperature,’ Denmark’s public health agency said.

‘The man tested positive, but the results of his wife and son are negative,’ it said.

The man is relatively well and has returned to his home, where he remains in isolation with his family, officials say.

The virus has also spread from Italy to Switzerland, where a man in his 70s from the Italian-speaking region of Ticino has been taken to hospital. 

The man was infected near Milan where he attended an event on February 15, federal health office chief Pascal Strupler told reporters. 

‘His state of health is good,’ the health office said in a statement, adding that the risk of contagion for Switzerland as a whole remained only ‘moderate’.

But it also said that, because of the proximity to Italy, ‘the probability is growing that other cases will be diagnosed’. 

The government said on Monday that it had stepped up testing on patients with flu-like symptoms and was working to raise awareness at all border points.  

Romania reported its first case on Wednesday – a man who was in contact with an Italian who visited the country last week.

North Macedonia had its first case yesterday, after a woman who had returned from a month in Italy was found to be infected with the virus.  

In Greece, Athens announced its first infection on Wednesday, a woman aged 38 who had recently returned from northern Italy. 

The Greek government said that in the event of a mass outbreak, it would activate temporary restrictions on travel to and from countries with a large number of infections as well as temporarily close schools, places of worship, cinemas, theatres, sports halls and businesses. 

Estonia also confirmed its first case today, although that was believed to be linked to Iran – another coronavirus hotspot – rather than Italy.  

Local media said the man arrived in Tallinn by bus from the Latvian capital Riga.

‘For now, there are no plans of putting cities in quarantine following this one case,’ social affairs minister Tanel Kiik told public broadcaster ERR. 

Similarly, Norway’s first virus patient, whose diagnosis was confirmed on Wednesday, had recently travelled from China rather than Italy.   

Italy has confirmed more than 400 cases of the virus with the death toll now at 12 and 50,000 people living under an armed lockdown in northern towns. 

EU leaders have rejected calls to shut down border crossings but a number of countries have said people may need to isolate themselves if they return from Italy. 

Poland has ordered all passengers returning from Italy and China to be medically tested while Israel, in an unprecedented move, has urged its citizens to reconsider any foreign travel at all.  

In Spain, hundreds of tourists are beginning a two-week quarantine at a Tenerife hotel after an Italian doctor brought the virus to the complex. 

The doctor, his wife and two more Italians who travelled with them tested positive for the virus after staying at the Canary Islands resort.  

Five other cases have been detected in mainland Spain in the last 24 hours – one in the Valencia region, two in the Madrid region and another two in Catalonia.  

One was a a 22-year-old Spanish man who recently returned from Milan and who tested positive for coronavirus on Wednesday, local health authorities said.  

Spain on Wednesday issued assurances that a cluster of new coronavirus infections did not risk a broader spread, after ten cases were detected since Monday evening.

Spanish health minister Salvador Illa has advised people not to travel to northern Italy and other global hotspots for the disease such as Wuhan in China, South Korea, Japan and Iran.  

In Germany, a passenger train was held up for around two hours in the town of Idar-Oberstein yesterday. 

A middle-aged man who had recently been in Italy on business was wearing a mask and showing possible virus symptoms – sparking alarm on board the train. 

The man was eventually taken to hospital for tests, the results of which are due back today, while other passengers continued their journeys, German media said. 

Germany has confirmed 21 cases, after a 47-year-old man with the virus was taken to hospital in serious condition in Düsseldorf and his wife also tested positive. 

Officials said the infected man was from Gangelt, near the Dutch border, and that he had been in contact with countless people in recent days, including during Carnival parties and while visiting a Cologne hospital for an unrelated health checkup. 

At least eight schools in the UK have closed while others have sent pupils home amid fears they may have been exposed to coronavirus during trips to northern Italy.

However, Public Health England (PHE) said that its general advice is not to close schools – a message echoed by health secretary Matt Hancock.

The closures come after travellers returning to the UK from northern Italy were told they may need to self-isolate as part of measures to stop the spread of illness. 

In London, energy firm Chevron asked about 300 British employees to work temporarily from home after an employee in its Canary Wharf office reported a flu-like illness. 

France has so far registered 18 infections and two deaths, and has urged its nationals to delay any plans to visit virus hotspots in northern Italy.  

Students returning from China, Singapore, South Korea and the Italian regions of Lombardy and Venice are being asked to remain at home for two weeks after their return. 

In Italy there are fears of excessive panic with psychiatrists saying there have been concerning signs in some aspects of public behaviour.

Rome-based psychiatrist Rossella Candela points to the empty shelves in supermarkets due to panic buying as one example.

‘Certain people adapt. But others react as if they were under bombardment in the Second World War,’ she said.

The rush to buy face masks – which have now all but sold out in pharmacies in the country’s north – is part of the phenomenon, she says.  

While authorities are trying to reassure the population, it’s difficult to combat fear when one is confronted by ‘something intangible, invisible, like a virus,’ says psychologist Gabriele Zanardi in Pavia to the south of Milan.

He says that the most worried seem to be outside the areas most heavily affected, as they haven’t experienced the reality of the outbreak.

As a result of the invisible nature of the condition, ‘people try to put a face to this invisible enemy, be it a Chinese person, someone with a cold,’ Zanardi says.

Milan’s Chinatown has been deserted for three days.

In a region governed by former interior minister Matteo Salvini’s far-right League, many Chinatown business owners have avoided ostracisation by closing shops and restaurants.

In Turin, after the first death from the outbreak was announced, a 40-year-old Chinese woman was attacked in the street by strangers who shouted: ‘You have the virus, go away or I’ll kill you.’