I don't expect that many SBers are traveling to Italy, but this might give an idea of how travel may be impacted in the near future. We have friends who were scheduled to do a Viking cruise from Barcelona to Venice. They have been given the option to reschedule for up to 24 months because of the following (Lombardy and Veneto are where Milan and Venice are located):
Level 4 - Do Not Travel to:
- Lombardy and Veneto due to the level of community transmission of the virus and imposition of local quarantine procedures.
The (sad) reality is that here in Italy everything has been locked, also outside these two regions. I am in Parma (Emilia-Romagna), and schools, kindergardens, universities, museums, even churches are closed. Cinemas and theatres are empty, no one is going dancing or in pubs in the evening.
These severe measures are quite more strict than in other countries. One could think that they are proportionate to the large number of cases discovered in Italy. In realty, the discovery rate is almost the same all around the world: given 100 tests done, typically 2-3 % are found positive.
Countries who are not reporting a lot of cases are simply not doing a lot of tests (also because, in some countries, these tests are very expensive - here they are free).
Here the health system over-reacted, going well beyond OMS recommendations, and thousands or tests are done to people having no symptoms. A number of them resulted positive, and this made the number of reported cases to explode, causing these extreme mobility limitations.
I am quite sure that in reality the infection is spreading more or less the same in all other European countries (Spain, France, Germany, etc.). Most cases of people getting the virus but not being severely ill are simply undetected in these other countries, because their policy about who must be tested are quite different from our ones.
So, it is just matter of time, and what is happening here will happen identical in every country. Be prepared, and look at what happens here, as you can learn from our errors and avoid the worst in your country.
It is still to be understood if the extreme measures adopted here will be beneficial on the long term spreading of the infection, or not. Certainly they will dilute over time the "wave" of the infection, making it longer but with a smaller number of people infected simultaneously. In countries who are not making tests and not taking measures limiting mobility probably there will a shorter, higher wave: