A security guard wearing a protective mask stands at the entrance of a large supermarket in Codogno, one of the towns on lockdown due to the coronavirus outbreak, as a long line of residents queue with trollies waiting to enter, in this picture taken by schoolteacher Marzio Toniolo in Codogno, Italy, February 25, 2020.
Deputy Economy Minister Antonio Misiani said on Saturday the government was working on a slew of measures to "boost growth at national level" and would ask parliament next week to let it push up the 2020 budget deficit to help pay for the move.Looking to halt the spread of the highly infectious disease, the government last week banned public gatherings across much of northern Italy and shuttered educational centres.
But the number of known cases versus deaths would put the virus' death rate in Iran at over 7 percent, much higher than other countries. That has worried experts at the World Health Organization and elsewhere that Iran may be underreporting the number of cases now affecting it. Jahanpour, however, disputed the report as being politically motivated, conflating other causes of deaths with the coronavirus and relying on sources without access to Iran's coronavirus testing labs.
Concerns continue to grow, however, as online videos showed an angry crowd setting fire to the courtyard of a medical clinic overnight in the southern city of Bandar Abbas. Jahanpour has warned that large increases in the number of confirmed cases would happen as Iran now has 15 laboratories testing for the virus.Earlier Saturday, Bahrain threatened legal prosecution against travelers who came from Iran and hadn't been tested for the new coronavirus and also barred public gatherings for two weeks.
"It highlighted that preventing the outbreak of the infection is the responsibility of individuals and society as a whole." It represented an unprecedented move, one that wasn’t taken even during the 1918 flu epidemic that killed tens of millions worldwide. Qatar's Health Ministry reported on Saturday the first case of coronavirus infection in the country.