News / EU

Austria, Switzerland, other European states confirm first coronavirus cases

Tuesday, 25 February 2020 7:20 PM [ Last Update: Tuesday, 25 February 2020 7:20 PM ]

A medical staffer with a protective suit (L) prepares to check a patient’s body temperature at a hospital in Zagreb, Croatia, on February 25, 2020. (Photo by AFP)

Several European countries, including Austria and Switzerland, have confirmed their first cases of the new coronavirus.

Austrian authorities placed a hotel in the Alpine city of Innsbruck under lockdown on Tuesday after an Italian receptionist working there tested positive for the flue-like virus.

Media reports said the hotel receptionist, a 24-year-old woman, was quarantined in a hospital in Innsbruck.

The case in Switzerland was a man in his 70s who was infected after attending an event near the Italian city of Milan.

Pascal Strupler, the chief of the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health, said in a statement that the man was isolated and “his state of health is good.”

Stressing that the risk of contagion for Switzerland as a whole remained only “moderate,” Strupler said, however, that because of the proximity to Italy, “the probability is growing that other cases will be diagnosed.”

Italy has 220 confirmed cases.

Speaking in the Croatian capital of Zagreb, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic announced the first case of the deadly virus in the Balkan country in a young man who had returned from Italy.

Plenkovic said the patient was a young male with mild symptoms and was in isolation in Zagreb, without revealing other details.

Countries stepping up efforts to fight new coronavirus

Countries throughout the globe are escalating efforts to contain an outbreak of the new coronavirus that has so far infected over 77,650 people, mainly in China.

Moreover, Romania’s television station Realitatea Plus announced on Tuesday its first confirmed case of coronavirus in a man who also returned from Italy earlier in the month.

Quoting medical sector sources, Realitatea said the individual had been quarantined at the Bucharest infectious diseases hospital Matei Bals.

The coronavirus, known as COVID-19, can cause various symptoms, ranging from those of the common cold to more severe diseases such as pneumonia. Common signs include fever, cough, shortness of breath, and other respiratory complications.

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Tuesday that the epidemic had peaked at its epicenter in China, where it has killed more than 2,600 people and infected over 77,000 others.

Elsewhere in the world, it has killed over a dozen people and spread across some 37 countries and regions.

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