Italy’s health authority have told its citizens to stand one metre away from each other in all public spaces as part of the precautionary measures to help stop the spread of coronavirus.
According to The Times, the one-meter rule will also apply to pubs, shops, and churches and is based on a study of how far saliva droplets can travel when they are released into the air as people talk.
Other measures by Italy’s health authorities include a ban on public gatherings and school closures in the north.
The death toll in Italy has jumped to 52 from 34 on Monday with the total number of confirmed cases in Europe’s worst affected country already at 2,036.
The three worst-hit regions in Italy are Lombardy, Veneto, and Emilia-Romagna.
Ten percent of virus patients in Italy were in intensive care with respiratory problems, the health chief of the Lombardy region in northern Italy has said.
He also added that they were almost exclusively over 65 years old and asked all elderly people in the region to leave home as little as possible for the next two weeks.
Giovanni Rezza, the head of the infectious diseases department at the national health institute, said that schools were a key area to keep control of.
‘Not because children are vulnerable — they don’t suffer as much as adults — but they can transmit it to parents and grandparents,’ he said.
