Italian health officials warned on Tuesday it was too soon to consider lifting lockdown restrictions, saying a deceleration in new cases of coronavirus should not raise hopes that the crisis was near an end, Reuters reports.

The government announced on Monday that curbs on movement and business activities introduced nationwide on March 9 would stay in place until at least the Easter holidays in mid-April.

“Today, official sources are suggesting that perhaps we can (lift restrictions) after Easter ... It seems to me highly unrealistic to think this nightmare will end by then,” said Guido Marinoni, head of the doctors' association in Bergamo, the northern city at the epicentre of Italy's epidemic.