Around 6,000 people have been detained on a cruise ship as tests are carried out on two Chinese passengers suspected of having the coronavirus.
A spokesman for the Costa Crociere cruise company confirmed passengers on the vessel, which is near Rome, were being kept aboard today.
The couple arrived in Italy on January 25 and boarded the ship, the Costa Smeralda, in the port of Savona that same day.
They subsequently came down with a fever and are suffering breathing difficulties.
The liner has visited Marseilles in France as well as the Spanish ports of Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca this week before docking on Thursday at Civitavecchia, north of Rome.
No one was being allowed off the ship while medical checks were carried out.
These will see if the pair had the potentially deadly coronavirus, the company spokesman said.
He said it might take "a few hours" before the situation became clearer.
The killer virus has claimed more than 100 lives and more than 7,000 have been infected by the virus in China.
The infection has been found in every region of the nation.
The coronavirus has infected nearly 8,000 people while the death toll has risen to 170.
The US and Japan have evacuated hundreds of their nationals from in and around the city of Wuhan, where the killer virus is thought to have originated and most of the fatalities have occurred.
UK diplomats are still negotiating with Chinese authorities over a flight to evacuate British nationals stuck in the area, with millions of residents in China on lockdown, after a flight hoped to have left today postponed.
The UK was working “urgently” with Chinese authorities on Thursday to ensure citizens in Wuhan can return on a flight “as soon as possible”, Downing Street has said.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “We are doing everything we can to get British people in Wuhan safely back to the UK.
“A number of countries’ flights have been unable to take off as planned including the British repatriation from Wuhan.
“We are working urgently with the Chinese authorities to ensure that the flight can take off as soon as possible.”
The flight is planned to touch down at a military base in the UK before passengers are taken to an NHS facility to be quarantined.
But the plane has been prevented from leaving China because “we haven’t got the necessary clearances and we are working with the Chinese authorities on securing those”, the spokesman said.
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