COVID-19 lockdowns in Italy
2020–2021 COVID-19 lockdowns in Italy / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
On 9 March 2020, the government of Italy under Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte imposed a national lockdown or quarantine, restricting the movement of the population except for necessity, work, and health circumstances, in response to the growing pandemic of COVID-19 in the country. Additional lockdown restrictions mandated the temporary closure of non-essential shops and businesses. This followed a restriction announced on the previous day which affected sixteen million people in the whole region of Lombardy and in fourteen largely-neighbouring provinces in Emilia-Romagna, Veneto, Piedmont and Marche, and prior to that a smaller-scale lockdown of ten municipalities in the province of Lodi and one in the province of Padua that had begun in late February.
![]() | This article needs to be updated. The reason given is: subsequent lockdowns in late 2020 and 2021. (May 2021) |
COVID-19 lockdown in Italy | |
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Part of COVID-19 pandemic in Italy | |
Date | 9 March 2020 (2020-03-09) – 18 May 2020 (2020-05-18)[lower-alpha 1] (2 months, 1 week and 2 days) |
Location | Italy San Marino Vatican City |
Caused by | COVID-19 pandemic in Italy |
Goals | containing the outbreak of COVID-19 in Italy |
Methods |
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Resulted in | about 60 million people quarantined (Italian population) |
The lockdown measures, despite being widely approved by the public opinion,[1] were also described as the largest suppression of constitutional rights in the history of the republic.[2] Nevertheless, Article 16 of the Constitution states that travel restrictions may be established by law for reasons of health or security.[3]
Italy was the first country to enact a COVID-19 lockdown nationwide;[4] many countries would introduce similar measures in subsequent months the COVID-19 pandemic spread globally.