ROME: An elderly cancer patient became the third person known to be infected with the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) to die in Italy, health officials said on Sunday, as the number of people contracting the virus continued to mount.

The death of the woman in a hospital in the small city of Crema in Lombardy, the center of Italy’s coronavirus scare, followed that of a 77-year-old woman on Saturday and a 78-year-old man on Friday, the first European victim of the Covid-19.