World governments should protect their population from COVID-19 pandemic using Italy and Lombardy as precursor

Mariano Supino; Alberto d'Onofrio; Federico Luongo; Giovanni Occhipinti; Alma Dal Co

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a respiratory infectious disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 (also known as 2019-nCoV), which originated in Wuhan, China, in early December 2019. On January 23 rd , Wuhan city shut down public transportation and airways; one week later, Wuhan and other cities in the province of Hubei, imposed strict social distancing measures (closure of school and non-essential work activities), combined with active search and isolation of infective cases and their contacts; on February 13 th , all non-essential companies and manufacturing plants were closed. On February 15 th , France reported the first death from COVID-19 outside Asia, while dozens of countries document cases of infection. On February 24 th , three weeks after the lockdown of Wuhan and other cities, cases in China All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.