Virus lockdown starts in Italy

Italy began its nationwide lockdown on Tuesday of 60 million people to contain the novel coronavirus, while the number of cases elsewhere in Europe and the United States increased.

So far, more than 114,000 cases of infection have been reported globally, and more than 4,000 people have died. Italy has more than 9,000 cases and almost 500 deaths, officials said. On Tuesday, officials confirmed that every country in the European Union.

Elsewhere, Israel mandated quarantine for incoming travelers and Japan moved toward a national emergency. Japan's Health Ministry have announced an additional 26 cases of novel coronavirus. The additional cases bring the country's total to 1,210 confirmed cases.

China reflected growing confidence that it has contained its epidemic as

President Xi Jinping on Tuesday visited the city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak. Of the 80,000 confirmed coronavirus cases reported in China, "more than 70 percent have recovered and been discharged," according to the World Health Organization (WHO) in a news conference on Monday.

In the United States, as of Tuesday morning, at least 730 people in 36 states and Washington, DC, have tested positive for coronavirus, according to federal and state health officials, and at least 27 patients – 22 in Washington state, two in California and two in Florida and one in New Jersey-- with the virus have died. Most of the deaths appear to involve patients ages 70 and older, based on broad age range information provided by health authorities.

President Donald Trump and top economic officials will meet with Republican lawmakers at a closed door lunch on Tuesday to discuss a payroll tax cut and other policy proposals to ease the economic fallout of coronavirus.

On Tuesday, New York Governor Mario Cuomo announced a one-mile "containment zone" would be created in New Rochelle, limiting "major gathering spaces" to curb the spread of the virus. The small city is in Westchester county, north of New York city.

Cuomo said National Guard troops would clean schools and deliver food to quarantined residents.

"New Rochelle, at this point, is probably the largest cluster of these cases in the United States," he said at a news conference.

The containment area is a one-mile radius centered around a synagogue believed to be at the center of the cluster, officials said.

New York had 173 confirmed cases statewide, but no deaths and only 14 people in hospitals, he said. Most of those hospitalized were in vulnerable high-risk groups, such as the elderly. The New Rochelle area had 108 virus cases, he said. 

Medical researchers have been warning that the nation's homeless are particularly vulnerable to the virus, because of cramped quarters in shelters, the sharing of utensils and a lack of hand-washing stations on the streets.

New York City, which has the largest homeless population in the country, issued an 11-page document telling shelters to screen people for symptoms and to identify and isolate people who have contracted the virus in a separate room.

In California, Princes Cruises said In a statement about the disembarkation of passengers from its Grand Princess cruise ship docked in Oakland and carrying at least 21 people with the virus, that it will be a "multiple day process".

It will require a step-by-step approach that prioritized the most vulnerable among the ship's more than 3,500 cruisegoers, said Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

The vessel had been docked off the coast of San Francisco since Wednesday, when officials announced that a passenger from a previous cruise on the vessel had died..

Two passengers, a Florida couple, have filed a lawsuit against Princess Cruises.

In Washington state, Life Care Center of Kirkland, the nursing facility at the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the US, said almost 60 percent of its current residents have tested positive for Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus.

Timothy Killian, a spokesman for facility, said Monday afternoon that the University of Washington informed the center Monday that 31 of the 53 residents have tested positive for the virus. Staff members had not yet been tested. "These are residents inside the facility at this moment," he said.

The nursing home outside Seattle accounts for 19 of the region's 20 deaths linked to the coronavirus. Killian said public health officials have not yet informed the center if they have identified the source of the virus or why it has proliferated here.

Ireland's government canceled all St. Patrick's Day parades in the country, including Dublin's, and similar events in other places have also been canceled.

Even with the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the city and state rising, New York City has no plans to cancel next week's St. Patrick's Day Parade, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Monday. But he and Cuomo both said that officials were weighing the possibility.

More than a hundred thousand people take part in the annual procession down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, with hundreds of thousands more lining the streets to watch.

The mayor of Boston, a city which, like New York, has a sizable Irish-American community, also canceled that city's annual St. Patrick's Day parade as a precautionary measure. Massachusetts has 28 confirmed cases of the coronavirus.