Several European countries have announced their 1st coronavirus cases, all apparently linked to the growing outbreak in Italy. Austria, Croatia, Greece & Switzerland said the cases involved people who had been to Italy.

The first positive virus test has been recorded in Latin America – a Brazilian resident just returned from Italy. Italy has become Europe’s worst-affected country.
Authorities have confirmed more than 300 cases and 12 deaths there, the most recent a 70-year-old resident of Lombardy who died after being taken to intensive care in Parma. The country has also seen four children infected.
Health ministers from France, Germany, Italy and the EU Commission committed to keeping frontiers open at a meeting on Tuesday as new cases of the virus emerged throughout Europe and in central and southern Italy.

In Austria, a young Italian couple who live in Innsbruck in the Tyrol was confirmed to have the virus. The couple’s home was sealed off and a hotel in which one of the pair work was put in lockdown.

Switzerland said a man in his seventies living in Ticino, bordering Italy, had been infected in Milan on 15 February and was now in isolation.
A man in Croatia who recently returned from Italy became the first confirmed patient in the Balkans. Spain reported its first case on the mainland, involving a woman in Barcelona who had been to northern Italy.

France confirmed the first death of a French national from the virus.
The 60-year-old French man was the second fatality in the country after an 80-year-old Chinese tourist died there earlier this month.