Italy has closed all schools and universities until at least the middle of the month amid a surge in coronavirus deaths.

The shutdown came after the death toll from the virus more than doubled in less than 48 hours, going from 52 on Monday to 107 yesterday.

Cinemas and theatres will also be closed and Italians have been told to avoid hugging, kissing or shaking hands with each other.

Italy has now recorded more deaths than either Iran or South Korea, and is second only to China.

The victims included a 55-year-old with an existing chronic health condition – the youngest person to die from the outbreak in Italy so far – and a 61-year-old doctor who was not known to have any health problems.

The Covid-19 strain has swept through Italy in the past two weeks, leading to flights being cancelled, towns quarantined and sporting fixtures and fashion shows called off.

Vinitaly, one of the world’s largest wine fairs held annually in the northern Italian city of Verona, was due to take place in April but has been postponed until June.

At the last count, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said there were 2,706 known cases of virus in Italy.

Only China and South Korea have recorded more.

Italian authorities have already cordoned off nearly a dozen so-called “red zones” in the wealthy north of the country, including towns in Veneto, Emilia-Romagna, and Lombardy, where nearly two-thirds of cases have occurred.

Inhabitants are blocked inside the affected towns and police are preventing any outsiders from entering.

Plans are now under way for a possible new lockdown zone around the city of Bergamo, northeast of Milan, in a bid to stem a sharp rise in infections there.

Among the new cases there were two magistrates who worked in Milan’s courtroom and a newborn baby in Bergamo.

It was not clear how the child contracted the virus. Professor Massimo Galli, the director of infectious diseases at Sacco hospital in Milan, said Italy’s comparatively high elderly population could have left it more vulnerable to the virus.

Italy has the highest life expectancy in Europe at 81 for men and 85 for women.

Mr Galli said: “Italy is a country of old people. The elderly with previous pathologies are notoriously numerous here.

“I think this could explain why we are seeing more serious cases of coronavirus here, which I repeat, in the vast majority of cases start mildly and cause few problems, especially in young people and certainly in children.

“Our life expectancy is among the highest in the world. But unfortunately, in a situation like this, old people are more at risk of a serious outcome.”

It came as the WHO warned that the latest data on Covid-19 indicates that it is more dangerous than seasonal influenza and likely to claim well over three times as many lives.

Director-General Tedros Adhanom said: “Covid-19 causes more severe disease than seasonal influenza. While many people globally have built up immunity to seasonal flu strains, Covid19 is a new virus to which no-one has immunity.

“That means more people are susceptible to infection, and some will suffer severe disease.

“Globally, about 3.4 per cent of reported Covid-19 cases have died. By comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1% of those infected.”

The lack of a vaccine was another major obstacle in the fight against Covi19, said Mr Adhanom.

Although numerous research efforts are under way worldwide, the clinical trials to ensure effectiveness and safety mean any immunisation programme is unlikely to be ready until 2021 at the earliest.

However, Mr Adhanom stressed that unlike influenza “containment is possible” and that the evidence so far suggests that the virus does not spread as easily as flu.

The WHO also revealed important developments in relation to how the virus presents.

There have been suggestions that there could be large numbers of infected people in China without symptoms, potentially skewing scientists’ efforts to count the incidence and estimate mortality rates.

Mr Adhanom said this did not appear to be the case, but encouraged other nations to carry out mass surveillance.

He said: “Evidence from China is that only 1% of reported cases do not have symptoms, and most of those cases develop symptoms within two days. Some countries are looking for cases of Covid-19 using surveillance systems for influenza and other respiratory diseases.

“Countries such as China, Ghana, Singapore and elsewhere have found very few cases of Covid-19 among such samples – or no cases at all.

“The only way to be sure is by looking for Covid-19 antibodies in large numbers of people, and several countries are now doing those studies. This will give us further insight into the extent of infection in populations over time.

“The WHO has developed protocols on how these studies should be done, and we encourage all countries to do these studies and share their data.”

Worldwide, there have been more than 93,000 cases in 77 countries and some 3,000 deaths.

The vast majority are still concentrated in China, but the spread there is continuing to slow.

In the US, where there are now more than 100 confirmed cases, lawmakers were readying an $8 billion emergency bill to help fund efforts to contain the virus.

It came as the number of cases in New York state rose to six. Among them were the family of a Manhattan lawyer who had tested positive for the coronavirus on Tuesday.

The lawyer’s son is believed to have been studying at New York’s Yeshiva University, which cancelled classes yesterday as a “precautionary step”.

Israelis returning from France, Germany, Spain, Austria and Switzerland have been ordered to selfisolate at home for 14 days, with non-residents potentially barred entry unless they agree to quarantine.

Meanwhile, German airline Lufthansa says it is grounding 150 of its 770 aircraft in the wake of the crisis.

Kristalina Georgieva, head of the International Monetary Fund, said epidemic posed a “serious threat” to global growth.