- Italy is one of the four major coronavirus hot zones in addition to China, Iran, and South Korea, and the government decided to quarantine parts of Northern Italy to prevent further infections.
- More than 16 million people will be stopped from traveling, although thousands have escaped the quarantine fleeing to neighboring counties or the southern provinces.
- Those forced to stay indoors for the following weeks will be able to access Amazon Prime Video free of charge on their devices.
- Visit BGR’s homepage for more stories.
With 366 dead out of the nearly 7,400 infected, Italy is one of the worst places to be when it comes to avoiding the coronavirus infection. The northern part of the country has been hit the hardest, and it all started some two weeks ago when the first cases were reported in the region.
The number of infections surged rapidly, and it got worse with each passing day. The Italian hot zone likely contributed to the spread of the disease in central Europe, with neighboring countries reporting increased coronavirus figures in the days that followed the outbreak in Italy. The country on Sunday shut down Northern Lombardy, including Milan and 14 nearby provinces, with the quarantine set to stay in place until April 3rd.
UPDATE: Since the writing of this article, the entire country of Italy has been put on lockdown.
The government’s plan to lock down the region leaked, Business Insider reports, giving thousands of people time to escape the quarantine. Authorities fear that some of those people who managed to leave Lombardy may be infected themselves, which would defeat the purpose of quarantine measures to begin with.
The best thing to do if a quarantine is imposed in your region is to weather the storm and wait for the virus to disappear. This new flu-like disease is curable, and over 60,000 patients of the more than 111,000 cases registered worldwide have been cured — there’s no guarantee, however, that you won’t catch the virus a second or third time after you’re cured.
While staying at home for two weeks or more might sound annoying and incredibly dull to some people, you should have plenty of entertainment at hand, as long as you’ve got an active internet connection and a smart device close by. Chances are that most people already have subscriptions to one or more streaming services, or at least some passwords. And Amazon is making it even easier to consume digital content in Italy.
Those people who can’t leave the Lombardy hot zone will be able to access Amazon Prime Video free of charge until March 31st, Tutto Android explains. The extended free trial applies to several provinces that are affected by the travel ban, and you can access the service from any device that can stream video to take advantage of it.
It’s unclear at this time whether Amazon will extend the promotion to other hot zones. But if Italy is getting free
