Coronavirus: The Italian government announced Wednesday night that it will lock down a significant portion of the country, including the northern regions that are its economic engine, in an effort to stop a resurgent wave of coronavirus infections.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte announced that the measures, the most drastic since the nationwide lockdown in March, will take effect on Friday and will seal off six regions in the country’s deeply infected north and highly vulnerable, and poorer, south.

“The situation is particularly critical,” Mr. Conte said at an evening news conference. He said the virus was moving at a “strong and even violent” pace.

Across Europe, efforts to halt a second wave of coronavirus cases with piecemeal measures are being replaced by far stricter rules — and hurried efforts to bolster health systems that could quickly reach capacity in the coming weeks. Starting Thursday, England will be under a second lockdown, while Italians will face a 10 p.m. curfew. Poland will shut schools and shops this weekend, and Lithuania will enter a full lockdown. Switzerland has called in the army to bolster hospitals. And France’s health minister is pushing to extend a state of emergency until February.

In Italy, the new measures will ban residents of the six regions from crossing borders except for work, health or other “situations of necessity,” Mr. Conte said. Movement within the regions will also be strictly limited. Bars and restaurants would be closed in all of the regions and shops selling nonessential goods would be closed in most of them.

Three of the regions spanned the country’s northwest and included Lombardy, which is the home of Italy’s financial capital Milan, Piedmont and Aosta Valley. The southern regions were Calabria, Puglia and the island of Sicily.

Mr. Conte said the restrictions, which have triggered fierce opposition from business groups, restaurants and many citizens who are exasperated with government limits on their freedom, were put in place because “there is a high probability that some regions will exceed the critical limits in intensive care units” in the upcoming weeks. He added, “We necessarily have to intervene.”

The country will be essentially divided into three levels of infection, dubbed “red, orange and yellow.” Areas that fall into those respective categories will be subjected to automatic restrictions. The government will make those assessments on a weekly basis.

The announcement adds specifics to a new government decree, announced earlier on Wednesday, which imposed a 10 p.m. curfew around the country and closed museums, high schools and, on the weekend, shopping malls. Mr. Conte also “strongly recommended” that Italians stay home during the day, but deferred the decision to establish local lockdowns to the country’s health minister and the regional governors.

Mr. Conte said he chose a more targeted approach rather than a blanket lockdown because nationwide measures may be too soft for the most infected areas or too draconian for places where the virus did not circulate strongly.

In Britain, Mr. Johnson spoke before Parliament on Wednesday, saying that there was no alternative to a monthlong lockdown if a “medical and moral disaster” was to be avoided. But for weeks, Mr. Johnson had resisted such drastic measures, rejecting calls from scientists who advise the government, and from the opposition Labour Party, for an earlier but shorter lockdown.

Britain has been the worst-hit country by the pandemic in Europe, with more than 60,000 deaths.

Lawmakers voted 516-38 to approve the rules on Wednesday, despite a rebellion from within Mr. Johnson’s Conservative Party. A number of Conservative lawmakers voiced strong opposition, including Graham Brady, who chairs a powerful committee.

“We cannot ask people to follow rules that patently make no sense,” he said. Another lawmaker, Charles Walker, said people were being coerced into restrictions that were “unjust” and in some cases “cruel,” adding: “this legislation goes against my every instinct.”

London was bustling with shoppers hours before the new rules took effect. Stores, restaurants, pubs and other nonessential businesses must close for a month; schools will remain open. People will be asked to stay home unless they are needed at work, or out to buy food or exercise.

Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland have already instituted similar restrictions, leaving England as an outlier within the United Kingdom.

Germany and France, which tried piecemeal measures, have reimposed nationwide lockdowns.

Discontent has mounted throughout Italy in recent weeks, with restaurant and bar owners taking to the streets to protest early closings recently imposed by the authorities. Yet Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has vowed to carry on with the new restrictive measures.

At the Vatican, Pope Francis on Wednesday returned to his private library for his weekly general audience, as he urged people to follow the recommendations of political and health authorities. The pope stopped public audiences in March, but resumed them at the beginning of September, allowing small groups to participate in a Vatican courtyard or the audience hall.

Switzerland called on the army to support its medical services on Wednesday as the daily number of virus cases hit a new peak. The Swiss cabinet said it agreed to deploy up to 2,500 military personnel to support testing, care and transport services. Switzerland’s home affairs minister, Alain Berset, described the situation as “tense” and urged hospitals and clinics to to halt nonessential surgeries. Switzerland recorded more than 10,000 cases on Wednesday, a single-day record, and 73 deaths.

Lithuania said it would impose a nationwide lockdown as of Friday, after the number of new cases tripled in recent weeks, while the prime minister of Denmark, and most of the government, went into quarantine after the justice minister tested positive for the virus.

Poland stopped short of a national lockdown, but announced new restrictions on Wednesday. Cultural institutions and nonessential shops in commercial centers must close on Saturday, and the number of customers allowed into other shops will be limited. Hotels will only be allowed to accept business travelers, and all schools starting at first grade will switch to online learning.

Poland largely avoided the first wave of the virus, but has been hit by skyrocketing numbers of cases, hospitalizations and deaths since the beginning of October. Doctors and medical experts warn that the chronically underfunded and understaffed health care system is on the brink of a collapse. The country has also faced huge protests in recent days over a court ruling that would impose a near-total ban on abortions. Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki appealed to demonstrators to “move their protests online” as he announced the virus measures.

— Karen Zraick, Stephen Castle, Elian Peltier, Elisabetta Povoledo, Emma Bubola, Nick C******-Bruce and Monika Pronczuk
The New York Times