Stranded for a week in the coronavirus-hit university town of Pavia in north Italy’s Lombardy region, around 85 Indian students have sent an SOS to get evacuated as soon as possible, The Times of India has reported.
The town has reported 17 deaths due to deadly coronavirus in the past few days.
According to the report, the students are in panic after a non-teaching faculty member of the University of Pavia’s engineering department tested positive for COVID-19. As many as 15 other staff members of the institution have been quarantined.
Half of the students even booked tickets to India. But, their flights got cancelled as the cases of the virus being reported in the country, and new tickets are expensive; a student told the publication. The grocery shops near them are fast running out of stocks as they fear the worst situation in the coming days. Therefore, they request the government of India to help them, said the student.
The number of people infected in Italy with the new coronavirus rose 40 percent to 1,576 in just 24 hours, Italian authorities announced on March 1. The number of deaths in Italy has gone to 34 since cases of the virus exploded in the country on February 21.
Italian health authorities say the increase is expected since it takes as long as two weeks for containment measures to take effect and because Italy has a large number of elderly people.
Lombardy, which includes Italy’s financial capital of Milan, accounts for just over half of the cases while Veneto and Emilia-Romagna have 18 percent and 20 percent, respectively.
All three regions have closed schools for the time being. In Veneto and Lombardy, closures also have hit museums, theaters, cinemas and most public offices, emptying cities like Milan, where many companies have permitted office workers to telecommute.
Earlier on March 1, the French community church in Rome, St Louis of the French, closed its doors to the public after a priest was infected with the new virus.
It was the first church in Rome closed by the virus. Churches in much of Veneto and Lombardy have closed their doors under widespread measures aimed at containing the spread of the virus. Televised Masses have been available for the faithful.
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