the corona virus continues to spread at
speed this time last week we were
talking about cases in under 40
countries now that figure is 67 there
are also close to 90,000 cases worldwide
and the global death toll has gone past
3,000 crucially the vast majority of new
cases are outside China is the latest
from the World Health Organization we
are in unchartered territory we have
never seen before this respiratory
pathogen that's capable of community
transmission but at the same time which
can also be contained with the right
measures the European Union has set up a
special task force to try and manage
this crisis we heard from the President
of the European Commission earlier the
risk level has risen from moderate to
high for people in the European Union in
other word the virus continues to spread
so that risk level is the second highest
available at the EU and we know that
Italy is by far the worst affected
country in Europe it has over smoke
close to 1,700 cases and the death toll
has gone past 50 next on the list would
be Germany with 150 cases and as you can
see in this clip caution abounds in
Germany and elsewhere here we have
Angela Merkel going to shake the hands
of her interior minister thanks but no
thanks was the response and health
experts have been emphasizing the good
hand hygiene
is essential to containing this virus
and that point was picked up by Boris
Johnson today single most useful thing
that we can all do to support our NHS to
stop the spread of corona virus is to
wash our hands two times happy birthday
hot water and and so much Johnson
talking about happy birthday that's
because the World Health Organization
recommends singing that song twice while
you wash your hands
that means you've done it for long
enough well if the w-h-o is trying to
stop this escalating worldwide in China
why really the crisis has already
escalated and we've learned a lot from
what's happened in China this chart
shows us the fatality rate
how it increases exponentially by age
see how the vast majority of deaths have
been in people of 70 or older we also
know that 90% of all the deaths
worldwide have been in Hubei Province in
China which is where the outbreak began
for example just today China confirmed
another 42 deaths there his Robin bran
in Hong Kong on there what's most
significant about those there's that all
those deaths occurred in the province of
Hebei that is the place where this all
began there are no new deaths across the
rest of mainland China according to
these figures from the government's and
as we say everyday we have to rely on
these official figures from the
government so that seems to be yet fresh
evidence that the draconian measures put
in place essentially to lock down that
province of Hebei do appear to be being
successful in terms of trying to prevent
the spread the further spread across the
rest of China as Robin was saying the
trakone ium measures involve what is
effectively a full lockdown in who Bay
province and look at the consequences
these are pictures from a major railway
station in Wuhan which is the biggest
city in Hubei this is a city of 11
million people and you can see it looks
like it's deserted and we're learning
lots of things about how the
government's going about enforcing that
lockdown this is an interesting report
from The New York Times it tell us China
is now requiring people to use software
on their smartphones which tells them
where they can go people are also being
given color codes that indicates their
health status and then that data from
the app is shared with police this story
is by a tech reporter called Paul
Missouri here he is tweeting many who
have red or yellow codes now lead lives
as partial pariahs with the digital
scarlet letter they can't go out or
return to work plenty don't understand
why their code is red or yellow yet when
they call up a complaint hotline it's
generally busy and these restrictions we
should say are very unlikely to
disappear anytime soon let's hear from
the w-h-o on the situation in China what
they're planning for is this could
remain for some time maybe some time to
lose a vaccine so we will have the
capacities to be able to manage
and run society and economy and
everything else the way we need to and
not lock people down to try and and and
and and manage this well South Korea is
the worst affected country outside of
China let me show you some of the
pictures there this is in Daegu in the
South of South Korea you can see streets
are being disinfected and just today
South Korea is reported close to 500 new
cases that takes its total to more than
four thousand and three quarters of
these cases are linked to one religious
sect which is led by this man Lee man he
this is him issuing an apology and
asking for forgiveness he has around
140,000 followers in South Korea and
he's been accused of not releasing
details of that membership quickly
enough which in turn the accusation runs
impacted on South Korea's response
moving for South Korea we shift to
Tehran in Iran this is footage from
inside one hospital we know there are
now 15,000 confirmed cases though it is
far from clear if that figure is
accurate well of course this is a global
health emergency but it's also posing a
threat to the global economy the OECD is
a multinational group that analyzes
things like the global economy go back
to November it was predicting global
growth of 2.9 percent it's now revised
that prediction to 2.4 percent here's
the OECD's chief economist but we see
that the epidemic spreads through North
America Europe and the Asia Pacific like
Japan and the fire in which case we will
have the same current eing
and travel banks as what we have seen in
China or similar and that would slice
and the work that who were protecting in
November two percent down to 1.5 percent
or some companies are shifting how
they're working in response to this
crisis for example the Japanese
manufacturer is sharp mostly makes
electronic goods now it's using one of
its TV factories to produce face masks
because they're running out of them in
Japan and that's despite health experts
warning they do very little to actually
protect against airborne infection over
the weekend there
a sharply worded tweet from the US
Surgeon General seriously people stopped
buying masks they're not effective in
preventing general public from catching
the corona virus but if health care
providers can't get them to care for
sick patients it puts them and our
communities at risk and just picking up
on these pressures this is out of a
newsroom in Washington
according to evergreen health in
Washington state six patients have now
died after testing positive there have
been 5 deaths of residents of King
County plus one death in Snohomish
County all six people were patients so
Washington's stay in the northwest of
the u.s. now confirming six deaths
connected to the corona virus and here's
one American doctor on the potential
stresses the hospitals will face if this
crisis continues to expand in the US
what causes me the most concerned is
whether or not our hospital systems are
able to deal with the medical surge
that's going to happen we know that our
hospitals operate near capacity all the
time and some hospitals may be strained
when they get a surge of patients many
of whom will have mild illness but we'll
still put a burden on hospitals in terms
of the emergency departments the
intensive care units for the more sick
patients as well as just in general
hospital operations making sure our
hospitals can cope with this that's the
biggest concern I have