(Bloomberg) -- Norway intensified its attempt to limit the spread of coronavirus as the number of confirmed cases jumped 77% to 489.
The Nordic country will ban all indoor events with more than 500 people and bar people from the most affected areas from entering its territory, Bjorn Guldvog, the head of the Norwegian Health Directorate, said at a press conference on Wednesday. Travelers from China's Hubei province, South Korea, Iran, Italy and Austria's Tyrol region will be either returned or quarantined. Norwegian residents will be allowed to return.
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The measures, Norway's most drastic to date, were presented as the country reported its biggest spike in confirmed cases. Authorities now expect a “relatively sharp increase” in cases going forward, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health's Director General Camilla Stoltenberg said at the press conference.
“We expect more hospitalization in the days and weeks ahead, and also gradually a higher number of intensive-care patients,” she said. “We must also expect deaths in the time ahead.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Mikael Holter in Oslo at mholter2@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Tasneem Hanfi Brögger at tbrogger@bloomberg.net, Stephen Treloar
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