Rome, Mar 16 (IANS): A newspaper in a coronavirus-hit Italian town went from having one and a half pages of obituaries to printing 10 now in just a month, a media report said.

On February 9, there were only a few to print, but by March 13 there were dozens in the L'Eco di Bergamo newspaper from the Bergamo town in Lombardy, one of the worst-hit regions in Italy, the Metro newspaper said in the report on Sunday.

A video on Twitter showed both editions of the newspaper side by side, showing the contrast as Italy's death toll soared to 1,809 with 24,747 cases, the highest figures outside mainland China, where the virus originated last December.

A post accompanying the video said: "This is the daily newspaper of Bergamo, one of the epidemic hotspot in Italy. ‘Please, stay at home and show this to anyone who tells you Covid-19 is just like the flu'."

Italy has now been on lockdown for almost a week.

The Transport Ministry banned passengers from taking ferries to the island of Sardinia and banned overnight train trips - which many in the north had been taking to reach homes and families in the south.