The government is following the case of an Alitalia aircraft with 300 passengers on board that was grounded Monday after it landed on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius amid fears of contagion from the coronavirus outbreak, Italy's foreign ministry said in a statement.
The foreign ministry is "in constant contact" with Alitalia and the Italian embassy in Pretoria (South Africa) in order to give "maximum help" to the Italians on board, the statement said.
The coronavirus has killed at least six people in northern Italy in recent days. Italy as the largest number of cases in Europe, at least 200, and at the weekend announced a series of drastic measures to try to contain the outbreak.
Health experts say the clusters of cases in South Korea, Iran and Italy point to the early stages of a pandemic or global outbreak of the coronavirus (Covid-19), whose epicentre is the Chinese city of Wuhan and surrounding province.
