Seven European countries report new infections connected to Italy

BERLIN－Seven European countries have announced cases of novel coronavirus in people who had recently traveled from northern Italy, where the virus emerged as a fast-growing cluster last week.

In Europe, Italy has become a front line in the global novel coronavirus outbreak. A 12th person has died in northern Italy as a result of the coronavirus, while the number of confirmed cases has risen to 374, an increase of more than 50 on the day before, Angelo Borrelli, the head of the Civil Protection agency, said on Wednesday.

Greece confirmed its first case on Wednesday. The patient was a 38-year-old Greek woman who had traveled from an area of northern Italy, said Sotiris Tsiodras, a representative of the Greek Ministry of Health.

Switzerland, Austria and Croatia also reported their first confirmed cases on Tuesday. Germany, France, and Spain, which had previously reported cases, confirmed new infections in people who were from or had visited northern Italy.

France reported the death of a 60-year-old man in a Paris hospital who was among three new cases on Wednesday, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 17.

The new cases also include a 36-year-old man who had made repeated trips to the Italian region of Lombardy, said Jerome Salomon, head of France's national health service.

A 70-year-old man from Switzerland's southern canton of Ticino, a state-level area that borders Italy, tested positive after returning from a trip to Milan, said Pascal Strupler, head of the Swiss Federal Office for Public Health on Tuesday. It is the first case in Switzerland, but Strupler said the country was likely to see more cases.

Croatia confirmed its first case on Tuesday in a man who had traveled to Milan. Croatia's Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said it's a "younger man, with a mild form of the disease" and that he has "been isolated and his condition is good".

Authorities in the western Austrian state of Tyrol said the country's first two cases involved a woman and a man, both 24-years-old and from the Bergamo area in the Lombardy region. They had driven to Austria in their car on Friday, the same day the coronavirus cases in Italy spiked.

German authorities said on Tuesday a 25-year-old man living in the southern German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg has tested positive for the coronavirus after a trip to Milan, and another man further north is in a critical condition with the disease.

The first case of novel coronavirus on Spain's mainland was confirmed on Tuesday, bringing the country's total to five. According to health authorities, the patient is a woman who lives in the city of Barcelona and who had recently returned from a trip to the north of Italy.

Italian Health Minister Roberto Speranza said late on Tuesday after meeting with counterparts from neighboring countries－including Austria, Switzerland and Croatiathat they had agreed closing borders would be "inappropriate".

French Health Minister Olivier Veran said that the officials signed a text laying out the "common principles" that include communicating daily to share epidemiological information and advising against the closing of borders.

France has called on nationals to avoid traveling to Italy amid the coronavirus outbreak, so has the United Kingdom, which advised its citizens to avoid traveling to almost a dozen towns in northern Italy and to self-isolate if they had flu-like symptoms.

Xinhua - Agencies