Hello and welcome to Al Jazeera’s live updates on the coronavirus outbreak. I’m Kate Mayberry reporting from our bureau in Kuala Lumpur.
With infections and deaths rising, Italy is poised to impose an unprecedented quarantine on its northern region of Lombardy.
In other developments on Saturday:
The number of people diagnosed with the new coronavirus exceeded 100,000 worldwide, with a number of new countries reporting their first cases.
The World Health Organization (WHO) as called the spread of the virus “deeply concerning”.
A hotel in southeastern China that was being used to house people quarantined over the virus collapsed. About 30 people remained trapped.
More:
Here are all the latest updates.
Sunday, March 8
00:42 GMT – China cases continue to slow
The spread of the coronavirus continues to slow in China, which has just announced its latest update.
The country reported 44 new cases on Saturday, most of them in Hubei where the outbreak originated. There were only three cases elsewhere on the mainland and those were imported from overseas.
A further 27 people died from COVID-19 bringing the national toll to 3,097.
00:35 GMT – New York declares emergency as US death toll rises
New York governor Andrew Cuomo has declared a state of emergency over the coronavirus after the number of confirmed cases there rose by 13 to 89.
“It allows expedited purchasing and expedited hiring, which is what we need right now,” Cuomo told a news conference.
More than half the states in the US have now reported cases of the virus, which causes COVID-19. Two more people in the western state of Washington died from the disease on Saturday, bringing the total death toll across the country to 19.
00:00 GMT – Italy planning to impose unprecedented quarantine
Italy is set to impose an unprecedented quarantine on the wealthy northern region of Lombardy, including Milan, as it steps up efforts to tackle the coronavirus.
According to a draft decree seen by Reuters, under the new rules, people will not be able to enter or leave Lombardy, which is home to some 10 million people, as well as 11 provinces in four of Italy‘s 19 other regions.
All museums, gyms, cultural centres, ski resorts and swimming pools will be closed in the targeted areas, according to the decree.
“The government is appealing to a sense of responsibility among all Italian citizens,” Sabina Castelfranco, an Italian journalist based in London, told Al Jazeera. “I think Italians are very concerned [about the virus].”
The governors of Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna, another region affected, have expressed reservations over the plan, so Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has not yet signed it. That could happen on Sunday.
So far, only a few limited areas of northern Italy, known as “red zones”, have been quarantined.
Click here to read all the updates from March 7.
SOURCE: Al Jazeera and news agencies