Italy fears new spread in country’s southern region

Health officials in Italy fear the coronavirus is slowly spreading from the northern part of the country to the south, according to The Associated Press.

While the number of confirmed coronavirus cases has started to stabilize in Italy, more and more cases are being seen in the south.

“It’s a matter of hours, not days,” the governor of the Campania region, which includes Naples, told the central government, complaining that his urgent requests for ventilators had gone unheeded. “There is a real chance of adding a tragedy of the south to the tragedy of the north.”

On March 10, the Italian government imposed one of the strictest nationwide shutdowns after an initial quarantine of a dozen small towns in the Lombardy and Veneto regions failed to stop the spread of the virus. On Thursday, Italy paused all nonessential production and industry, marking the most widespread manufacturing shutdown in the world.

As of Friday morning, Italy had more than 80,000 confirmed cases.

Though the U.S. surpassed Italy in confirmed cases Thursday, the European country still has by far the most deaths in any other Western country, with more than 8,000.