Italy’s extended quarantine restricting the movement of people in its industrial northern heartland have provoked panic among residents and accentuated the country’s north-south divide.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte signed a decree on Sunday imposing restrictions to the movement of people in the northern region of Lombardy — the epicenter of the outbreak in Italy — and 14 other provinces across the north, until April 3. The measures (an extension of a preexisting lockdown of 11 towns in Lombardy and Veneto) now affect more than 16 million people, banning them from moving in and out of those areas.

The publication of a draft decree Saturday afternoon by a newspaper revealing the forthcoming, wider quarantine measures prompted panic among residents trying to get out before the restrictions came into force after midnight.

Media reports said bars and restaurants emptied and thousands of people tried to leave the region in cars and trains, where there were reports of shoving and pushing by passengers.

Violent protests have broken out in 27 Italian prisons against coronavirus restrictions with many inmates asking for an amnesty due to the virus emergency, news agency ANSA reported Monday, citing local sources.

Some 20 inmates had managed to break out of Foggia prison in Puglia during a riot Monday morning, ANSA said citing local sources.  Shop keepers in the area were told to close their shops in the vicinity of the prison.

Prison unrest broke out in a prison in Modena Sunday after inmates were informed that visits from relatives had been banned to prevent the spread of infection. In the south, relatives of detainees in a Poggioreale prison in Naples clashed with police against the government ban.

Italian stocks on the blue-chip FTSE MIB initially failed to open Monday along with other European markets. When the index did open, stocks were trading down around 2,290 points, or around 11% lower, and by late afternoon the index was down around 9.5%.

Italy now has 7,375 confirmed cases of the virus and 366 deaths. The outbreak has been concentrated in Italy’s wealthiest northern regions of Lombardy (where there are 3,372 confirmed cases), Emilia-Romagna (with 1,097 cases) and Veneto and has highlighted Italy’s north-south economic and cultural divide.

The presidents of the southern regions of Campania, Puglia and Calabria — which have far few cases of the virus — have pleaded with their own inhabitants studying or working in the north not to bring the virus back down south, telling people “don’t come down here.”

Those regions, as well as Basilicata and Molise, have signed decrees ordering anyone who does arrive from the affected northern regions into a self-imposed quarantine for two weeks. Puglia’s president said those who ignored the order were committing a crime and could be prosecuted.

La Repubblica newspaper quoted Jole Santelli, the governor of Calabria, as telling people that “returning from the north in an uncontrolled way puts our country in danger. … Don’t do it, stop!”

“The government must block an exodus to Calabria, which risks triggering a disastrous bomb,” said Jole Santelli, the president of Calabria.

Economists predict that Italy’s economy, weak before the outbreak, will go into recession and the government has already announced that it will spend billions of euros to try to mitigate the economic impact of the virus on businesses and to help the north’s beleaguered health-care system.

President Donald Trump sought to play down the plunging price of oil and the global spread of the new coronavirus as markets tanked Monday, saying that lower gas prices were good for consumers and comparing COVID-19 to the common flu.

“Good for the consumer, gasoline prices coming down!” Trump wrote in one of a series of posts on Twitter. In another, he wrote that the flu killed 37,000 Americans last year, compared with 22 known deaths from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

The market slid Monday amid an all-out oil price war and fears over the economic pain to come from the coronavirus. The sell-off triggered market “circuit breakers” shortly after trading opened, after the major indexes fell by 7% in less than 15 minutes.

Oil prices were down more than 20% after Saudi Arabia announced major price cuts and production increases. The Saudi move came after Russia rejected a proposal by OPEC to cut 1.5 million barrels of production per day.

Trump said the collapse was caused by Saudi Arabia and Russia “arguing over the price and flow of oil.”

“That, and the Fake News, is the reason for the market drop!” Trump tweeted. “Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on,” he said.

The president’s downplaying of the coronavirus comes even as other parts of his administration signaled that containing the disease was his top priority.

“The American people should know President Trump is leading a whole of government approach,” Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told Fox Business on Monday. “It is the number one priority of this administration.”

Monday’s market turmoil contributed to several weeks of chaotic financial declines spurred by concerns that efforts to contain the flu-like respiratory infection, which emerged late last year in China, will hamper global growth. The president is expected to meet with his economic team later Monday to review options to stem the impact of the disease on the economy.

Some economists have speculated that declines in the price of oil and historically low rates, including for the popular 30-year fixed mortgage, could boost consumer sentiment in the short term. But those factors could be overwhelmed by negativity around the spread of the coronavirus, they cautioned.

“The question is whether the fear factor attributable to the virus will overwhelm any positive impact from lower gasoline prices and lower mortgage rates,” Edward Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research, told CNBC over the weekend.

Earlier Monday, Trump tweeted that  Vice President Mike Pence, who is leading the government’s coronavirus task force, was doing a great job. Trump also boasted that his administration’s travel restrictions on China, which were announced in January, saved lives.

“The BEST decision made was the toughest of them all – which saved many lives,” Trump tweeted. “Our VERY early decision to stop travel to and from certain parts of the world!”

Some of the president’s posts on Monday were more in line with his ordinary preoccupations.

Despite the precipitous market drop, Trump spent some of his morning directing fury at the news media — “So much FAKE NEWS!” — former Vice President Joe Biden, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, and the Democratic Party, which he accused of attempting to “smear” Biden’s rival Sen. Bernie Sanders.

— CNBC’s Eamon Javers and Kevin Breuninger contributed to this report.