COVID-19 lockdowns in Italy

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.

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.

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