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The Czech Republic has recorded its first three cases of the new coronavirus: two men and a woman recently arrived from northern Italy, Health Minister Adam Vojtech said Sunday. A fourth person, a woman, is still undergoing tests. "We have the first three cases of the COVID-19 disease caused by the new coronavirus," Vojtech told reporters. The virus was found in a man born in 1952 who had attended a conference in the northern Italian city of Udine.

He has been hospitalised at Prague's Bulovka hospital, as has an American tourist born in 1999, who arrived in Prague from Milan, where she has been studying at the university. The woman came with an Ecuadorean friend of the same age who had similar symptoms but has tested negative in initials checks, said Vojtech. She would undergo a new test, probably on Monday, he added. The third case is a man born in 1976, who returned from a skiing trip in the Veneto region of northern Italy.

This man is hospitalised in the northern Czech city of Usti nad Labem. All the patients appear to have a mild form of the virus and all are isolated in infectious disease hospital wards, the minister added.