UK considering partial lockdown in London - CNN

Discussions have been held in Downing Street about restricting travel in and out of the city, including shutting down parts of the capital's public transport network, and about how those measures would be enforced, the sources said.

Scientists believe that the spread of the virus is more advanced in London than in the rest of the UK, and there are concerns that not enough residents here are heeding the advice to work from home and stop going to bars, restaurants and other public places.

Asked at the UK government's daily coronavirus press conference about whether London would see further legal restrictions, Johnson said: "We live in land of liberty, as you know, and it's one of the great features of our lives we don't tend to impose those sorts of restrictions on people in this country. But I have to tell you we will rule nothing out and we will certainly wish to consider bringing forward further and faster measures where that is necessary."

The questions about the stricter measures for London began swirling after the First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, raised the issue in a press briefing Wednesday. As the political leader in Scotland, Sturgeon is party to discussions about coronavirus planning in the UK.

A Downing Street source declined to comment on specifics or timing on any further restrictions in the capital, stressing that the government would do all that was necessary to protect public health.

But if such drastic measures were introduced, Londoners would be given plenty of notice to make any personal arrangements before they came into place, two government sources told CNN. They would mirror those taken in some European countries: In France, residents face a fine if they are unable to justify a decision to be outside.

A source close to the office of London mayor Sadiq Khan told CNN that officials in City Hall were not aware of the plans yet and had not been party to any government thinking. Multiple sources close to the Prime Minister said they did not expect an announcement about London to be made imminently. But UK officials have repeatedly warned that the situation is moving quickly.

Earlier this week, Johnson warned that the spread of the virus in London was ahead of the rest of the UK and that Londoners should "take particularly seriously the advice about working from home and avoiding confined spaces such as pubs and restaurants."

Asked Wednesday about what he thought of people who failed to heed that advice, Johnson said: "The more ruthlessly we can enforce upon ourselves the advice... the fewer deaths we will have and the less suffering there will be."

In his press conference, Johnson said that all schools in the UK would close by the end of the week and that exams scheduled for the summer would not take place.

The UK has faced criticism from other nations that it has not yet been tough enough on measures against the pandemic. But British officials have stated repeatedly that they would move on a phased plan. The UK would do the "right thing at the right time," Johnson said.

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2020-03-19 08:12:59Z
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Coronavirus: Craig Ruston 'youngest UK death' - BBC News

A man in his 40s with motor neurone disease (MND) is thought to be the youngest person in the UK to have died having tested positive for coronavirus.

Craig Ruston, died in Kettering, Northamptonshire, on Monday morning and his chest infection was diagnosed as Covid-19.

In a post on his Facebook page, Me and My MND, his wife Sally paid tribute to a "wonderfully kind and caring person".

In the UK, 104 people with coronavirus have now died.

Mr Ruston's wife said he was given about two years to live when he was diagnosed with MND in June 2018 and his "fight with MND was not ready to be over".

"Last Tuesday he was taken unwell and we have since spent the last six days in isolation," she said.

"Craig's chest infection was confirmed as Covid-19. How dare that take Craig who was already facing this, the most vile and evil of diseases."

In tribute to her husband, she added: "He welcomed everyone. There were no airs and graces with Craig. He loved the world. He absorbed the world.

"He was one of the most intelligent people I know that would absorb information and could somehow explain just about anything."

Prof Andrew Chilton, medical director from Kettering General Hospital, said: "Sadly we can confirm that a man who was being cared for at Kettering General Hospital, and had tested positive for Covid-19 has died.

"The patient who died on 16 March had underlying health conditions.

"His family has been informed and our thoughts and condolences are with them at this difficult and distressing time."

Globally the number of confirmed cases of coronavirus have passed 200,000 and more than 8,000 people have died.

Find BBC News: East of England on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. If you have a story suggestion email eastofenglandnews@bbc.co.uk

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2020-03-18 14:49:30Z
52780673281247

I’m a Doctor in Britain. We’re Heading Into the Abyss. - The New York Times

LONDON — Ten days ago, I was asked to see a patient. I’m a respiratory specialist in an intensive-care unit at a hospital in London, so it wasn’t surprising that the patient needed a ventilator. It seemed fairly typical. But the patient turned out to have the coronavirus — our hospital’s first case and one of nearly 2,000 people who have so far tested positive in Britain. I hadn’t worn a mask. Soon I developed a cough.

Though I experienced neither fever nor breathlessness, I was told to self-isolate for 14 days. That’s where I am now, in self-isolation. And I’m not the only one from my hospital. After just one patient with Covid-19, a quarter of our junior staff are off with coughs and sniffles we would normally work through. A single case of the coronavirus has wreaked havoc in our hospital.

It’s a microcosm of what may come. Britain has fewer intensive-care beds than most other European countries. Occupancy rates are high, and there’s a daily struggle to discharge enough people to make space for new patients. Even when a bed is available, we do not have the nurses to staff it. A decade of cuts and underfunding has left us dangerously exposed. This is the perpetual winter of the N.H.S.

For the past week I have been watching from the sidelines. Watching while my colleagues gear up for the long road ahead, resting when they can, shoring up procedures for managing infected patients, training one another, and making plans for illness and ways to isolate themselves from their families. Watching while plans are made to cancel nonemergency care and move staff members to the front line.

It’s all hands on deck. Rotations to new departments and hospitals have been canceled: I will stay on in intensive care, and doctors in other departments will come join me on the front line. My plans to work part-time have gone out of the window. But this is my vocation — we are never not doctors. When we are called upon to step up, there is only one answer.

As people with the coronavirus flood our corridors, hospitals will be pushed to the breaking point. Britain is a rich country and may fare better than others. But the N.H.S. is creaking at the seams after years of underfunding. A decade of cuts by successive Conservative governments has stripped the service of resources. Staff morale is low and retention is poor. We are already working at capacity.

When our hospitals are overwhelmed and we have to decide how to allocate scarce resources, how do we choose whom to ventilate and whom not to? Italy is nearly at that point, and its health service has many more intensive-care beds per person than Britain’s. Will I have to tell someone we can’t treat a loved one because we’re out of ventilators, oxygen, tubes, masks, hospitals, staff? Will we then impose an age limit, as some hospitals in Italy are considering, or will some notion of “deservingness” come into play?

The government’s strategy centers on flattening the peak of the epidemic while ensuring the public doesn’t give up on self-isolation at just the wrong moment and head outside into the eye of the storm. So unlike some other countries, we are not yet in full shutdown. After a week of cabin fever, I can understand not wanting to enforce isolation sooner than necessary.

But I worry about how we know where we are on the epidemic curve. Have we tested enough people? What if lockdown comes too late? Will we be overwhelmed too soon? Across the N.H.S. this winter there have been patients in corridors and canceled surgeries. How many people will die because we’ve been working on the brink of collapse for too long?

I am not an epidemiologist. I do not pretend to know the right strategy. But if Britain experiences anything like what we’ve seen elsewhere, we’re on our way to tragedy.

What’s certain is that with 100,000 job vacancies already, the N.H.S. will not survive this crisis without protecting and respecting its staff. In 2018, two-thirds of doctors in their second year of training chose not to pursue specialty jobs. We are being asked to do more with little compensation while colleagues are hung out to dry because the system failed them. To add insult to injury, we have been provided with out-of-date masks with which to protect ourselves.

We already know that our counterparts in Italy, China and elsewhere have given their lives to the vocation they chose. For years, health care workers have been raising the alarm that the N.H.S. is in crisis — calling on the government for better funding for our hospitals and better working conditions for ourselves.

As the coronavirus crisis intensifies, we must be given the means to protect ourselves and our patients, particularly those most vulnerable. We deserve transparency. We demand honesty. Without that, I don’t know how many people will stick around after this is all over.

And right now, it feels like we’re heading into the abyss.

Jessica Potter (@DrJessPotter) is a respiratory specialist doctor working in London and a member of EveryDoctor, an organization that campaigns for the working rights of doctors.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.

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2020-03-18 06:15:14Z
CAIiELNrT_IIQXb_rHSgUsFgZp8qFwgEKg8IACoHCAowjuuKAzCWrzwwt4QY

US, UK coronavirus strategies shifted following UK epidemiologists' ominous report - CNN

The study, which has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal, was released on Monday by London's Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team, which says it is advising the UK government on its response strategy. The study says it used modeling that has informed the approach of the British government in recent weeks; on Monday, the government abruptly called on vulnerable and elderly Britons to isolate themselves for 12 weeks, and introduced a variety of social distancing and quarantine recommendations that days earlier seemed distant prospects. Also on Monday, President Donald Trump unveiled a 15-day plan to slow new infections in the United States, including more stringent recommendations about staying home and avoiding groups of 10 people or more, among other steps.

An author of the study, Imperial College Professor Neil Ferguson, said in an email to CNN on Tuesday the study was given to the White House Coronavirus Task Force over the weekend and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday.

"The White House task force received it late Sunday afternoon, CDC yesterday," Ferguson wrote to CNN. "To be honest, I don't know how much it influenced decision making. But I hear Dr Birx cited it. We will be having a much more detailed discussion with the task force tomorrow morning."

During a briefing on Monday, White House coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx said, "We have been working on models, day and night, around the globe ... We've been working with groups in the United Kingdom. So we had new information coming out from a model." She did not specify which model she was referring to.

CNN has reached out to government officials in the UK and United States about the report.

Mitigation and suppression

Epidemiological studies are based on modeling from available data, and rely on assumptions that can later prove false, and generate predictions that can appear alarming as they deal with the pandemic's entire term. This is one of many models. While mitigation "focuses on slowing but not necessarily stopping epidemic spread," the study explains, suppression, "aims to reverse epidemic growth, reducing case numbers to low levels and maintaining that situation indefinitely."

The study says "the most effective mitigation strategy" would still lead to hospitals -- even at surge capacity -- needing eight times as many intensive care unit beds as they could provide in the UK. Yet the study also notes that "optimal mitigation policies" -- such as combining the home isolation of suspected cases, home quarantine of those living with suspected cases and social distancing among the elderly and others at high risk of severe disease -- might reduce peak health care demand in the UK by two-thirds and deaths by half.

"For countries able to achieve it, this leaves suppression as the preferred policy option," the report concludes.

For the study, researchers used a simulation model that was originally developed to support pandemic flu planning and modified it to examine the impact of certain scenarios for the coronavirus pandemic. Their models show that under a mitigation strategy: "even if all patients were able to be treated, we predict there would still be in the order of 250,000 deaths in GB, and 1.1-1.2 million in the US." It was not immediately clear what length of time researchers assumed to be the full course of the pandemic.

The study concludes that the suppression strategy will likely lead to the disease quickly spreading again once these measures are lifted, and that such measures will be needed periodically until a vaccine is found. It says: "The major challenge of suppression is that this type of intensive intervention package -- or something equivalently effective at reducing transmission -- will need to be maintained until a vaccine becomes available (potentially 18 months or more) -- given that we predict that transmission will quickly rebound if interventions are relaxed."

Other health experts welcomed the study but reiterated how many uncertainties the coronavirus pandemic was generating. The publication of this evidence remains "important" and "useful," but "there are still huge uncertainties around any future estimates, reinforcing just how difficult decision-making is during a pandemic," Michael Head, a senior research fellow in global health at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom, said in a written statement released by the UK-based Science Media Centre on Tuesday.

"It would still be useful to know the full set of evidence that is informing decision-making, both in the UK and across other countries. I'd really like to see a dashboard, a little like the visualisations of case numbers and deaths per country, that stores the reasoning behind each country's government policy," Head wrote. "This should cover not just the UK, but as many countries as possible. An open access evidence base is not as headline-grabbing as discussing mortality rates, but no less important."

WHO: Countries need 'blended strategy' for epidemics

The World Health Organization, which was not involved in the new study, notes that while there is still much to learn about the novel coronavirus, older adults and people with pre-existing medical conditions are at higher risk of developing serious illness.

According to WHO, "data to date suggest that 80% of infections are mild or asymptomatic, 15% are severe infection, requiring oxygen and 5% are critical infections, requiring ventilation."

Last week, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a media briefing that countries should tailor their responses to address the spread of disease seen specifically in their nations.

"This is an uneven epidemic at the global level. Different countries are in different scenarios, requiring a tailored response. It's not about containment or mitigation -- which is a false dichotomy. It's about both," Ghebreyesus said during the briefing.

"All countries must take a comprehensive blended strategy for controlling their epidemics and pushing this deadly virus back," he said in part. "Countries that continue finding and testing cases and tracing their contacts not only protect their own people, they can also affect what happens in other countries and globally."

CNN's Jacqueline Howard contributed to this report.

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2020-03-17 16:37:00Z
52780669742245

US, UK coronavirus strategies shifted following UK epidemiologists' ominous report - CNN

The study, which has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal, was released on Monday by London's Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team, which says it is advising the UK government on its response strategy. The study says it used modeling that has informed the approach of the British government in recent weeks; on Monday, the government abruptly called on vulnerable and elderly Britons to isolate themselves for 12 weeks, and introduced a variety of social distancing and quarantine recommendations that days earlier seemed distant prospects. Also on Monday, President Donald Trump unveiled a 15-day plan to slow new infections in the United States, including more stringent recommendations about staying home and avoiding groups of 10 people or more, among other steps.

An author of the study, Imperial College Professor Neil Ferguson, said in an email to CNN on Tuesday the study was given to the White House Coronavirus Task Force over the weekend and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday.

"The White House task force received it late Sunday afternoon, CDC yesterday," Ferguson wrote to CNN. "To be honest, I don't know how much it influenced decision making. But I hear Dr Birx cited it. We will be having a much more detailed discussion with the task force tomorrow morning."

During a briefing on Monday, White House coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx said, "We have been working on models, day and night, around the globe ... We've been working with groups in the United Kingdom. So we had new information coming out from a model." She did not specify which model she was referring to.

CNN has reached out to government officials in the UK and United States about the report.

Mitigation and suppression

Epidemiological studies are based on modeling from available data, and rely on assumptions that can later prove false, and generate predictions that can appear alarming as they deal with the pandemic's entire term. This is one of many models. While mitigation "focuses on slowing but not necessarily stopping epidemic spread," the study explains, suppression, "aims to reverse epidemic growth, reducing case numbers to low levels and maintaining that situation indefinitely."

The study says "the most effective mitigation strategy" would still lead to hospitals -- even at surge capacity -- needing eight times as many intensive care unit beds as they could provide in the UK. Yet the study also notes that "optimal mitigation policies" -- such as combining the home isolation of suspected cases, home quarantine of those living with suspected cases and social distancing among the elderly and others at high risk of severe disease -- might reduce peak health care demand in the UK by two-thirds and deaths by half.

"For countries able to achieve it, this leaves suppression as the preferred policy option," the report concludes.

For the study, researchers used a simulation model that was originally developed to support pandemic flu planning and modified it to examine the impact of certain scenarios for the coronavirus pandemic. Their models show that under a mitigation strategy: "even if all patients were able to be treated, we predict there would still be in the order of 250,000 deaths in GB, and 1.1-1.2 million in the US." It was not immediately clear what length of time researchers assumed to be the full course of the pandemic.

The study concludes that the suppression strategy will likely lead to the disease quickly spreading again once these measures are lifted, and that such measures will be needed periodically until a vaccine is found. It says: "The major challenge of suppression is that this type of intensive intervention package -- or something equivalently effective at reducing transmission -- will need to be maintained until a vaccine becomes available (potentially 18 months or more) -- given that we predict that transmission will quickly rebound if interventions are relaxed."

Other health experts welcomed the study but reiterated how many uncertainties the coronavirus pandemic was generating. The publication of this evidence remains "important" and "useful," but "there are still huge uncertainties around any future estimates, reinforcing just how difficult decision-making is during a pandemic," Michael Head, a senior research fellow in global health at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom, said in a written statement released by the UK-based Science Media Centre on Tuesday.

"It would still be useful to know the full set of evidence that is informing decision-making, both in the UK and across other countries. I'd really like to see a dashboard, a little like the visualisations of case numbers and deaths per country, that stores the reasoning behind each country's government policy," Head wrote. "This should cover not just the UK, but as many countries as possible. An open access evidence base is not as headline-grabbing as discussing mortality rates, but no less important."

WHO: Countries need 'blended strategy' for epidemics

The World Health Organization, which was not involved in the new study, notes that while there is still much to learn about the novel coronavirus, older adults and people with pre-existing medical conditions are at higher risk of developing serious illness.

According to WHO, "data to date suggest that 80% of infections are mild or asymptomatic, 15% are severe infection, requiring oxygen and 5% are critical infections, requiring ventilation."

Last week, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a media briefing that countries should tailor their responses to address the spread of disease seen specifically in their nations.

"This is an uneven epidemic at the global level. Different countries are in different scenarios, requiring a tailored response. It's not about containment or mitigation -- which is a false dichotomy. It's about both," Ghebreyesus said during the briefing.

"All countries must take a comprehensive blended strategy for controlling their epidemics and pushing this deadly virus back," he said in part. "Countries that continue finding and testing cases and tracing their contacts not only protect their own people, they can also affect what happens in other countries and globally."

CNN's Jacqueline Howard contributed to this report.

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2020-03-17 15:42:55Z
52780669742245

US, UK coronavirus strategies shifted following UK epidemiologists' ominous report - CNN

The study, which has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal, was released on Monday by London's Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team, which says it is advising the UK government on its response strategy. The study says it used modeling that has informed the approach of the British government in recent weeks; on Monday, the government abruptly called on vulnerable and elderly Britons to isolate themselves for 12 weeks, and introduced a variety of social distancing and quarantine recommendations that days earlier seemed distant prospects. Also on Monday, President Donald Trump unveiled a 15-day plan to slow new infections in the United States, including more stringent recommendations about staying home and avoiding groups of 10 people or more, among other steps.

An author of the study, Imperial College Professor Neil Ferguson, said in an email to CNN on Tuesday the study was given to the White House Coronavirus Task Force over the weekend and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday.

"The White House task force received it late Sunday afternoon, CDC yesterday," Ferguson wrote to CNN. "To be honest, I don't know how much it influenced decision making. But I hear Dr Birx cited it. We will be having a much more detailed discussion with the task force tomorrow morning."

During a briefing on Monday, White House coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx said, "We have been working on models, day and night, around the globe ... We've been working with groups in the United Kingdom. So we had new information coming out from a model." She did not specify which model she was referring to.

CNN has reached out to government officials in the UK and United States about the report.

Epidemiological studies are based on modeling from available data, and rely on assumptions that can later prove false, and generate predictions that can appear alarming as they deal with the pandemic's entire term. This is one of many models. While mitigation "focuses on slowing but not necessarily stopping epidemic spread," the study explains, suppression, "aims to reverse epidemic growth, reducing case numbers to low levels and maintaining that situation indefinitely."

The study says "the most effective mitigation strategy" would still lead to hospitals -- even at surge capacity -- needing eight times as many intensive care unit beds as they could provide in the UK. Yet the study also notes that "optimal mitigation policies" -- such as combining the home isolation of suspected cases, home quarantine of those living with suspected cases and social distancing among the elderly and others at high risk of severe disease -- might reduce peak health care demand in the UK by two-thirds and deaths by half.

"For countries able to achieve it, this leaves suppression as the preferred policy option," the report concludes.

For the study, researchers used a simulation model that was originally developed to support pandemic flu planning and modified it to examine the impact of certain scenarios for the coronavirus pandemic. Their models show that under a mitigation strategy: "even if all patients were able to be treated, we predict there would still be in the order of 250,000 deaths in GB, and 1.1-1.2 million in the US." It was not immediately clear what length of time researchers assumed to be the full course of the pandemic.

The study concludes that the suppression strategy will likely lead to the disease quickly spreading again once these measures are lifted, and that such measures will be needed periodically until a vaccine is found. It says: "The major challenge of suppression is that this type of intensive intervention package -- or something equivalently effective at reducing transmission -- will need to be maintained until a vaccine becomes available (potentially 18 months or more) -- given that we predict that transmission will quickly rebound if interventions are relaxed."

CNN's Jacqueline Howard contributed to this report.

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2020-03-17 15:09:58Z
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'Where is Boris?': The UK government's cautious coronavirus strategy provokes a public backlash - CNBC

Boris Johnson, U.K. prime minister and leader of the Conservative Party, reacts during a general election campaign visit to the JCB Cab Manufacturing Centre in Uttoxeter, U.K., on Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2019.

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The U.K. government is facing growing calls from the public and scientific community to take more drastic measures to combat the new coronavirus, as the rest of Europe and the U.S. shuts down much of public life to prevent the virus spreading further.

"#WhereisBoris" has been trending on Twitter this weekend with many members of the British public venting their frustration at Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his government's apparently cautious approach when it comes to containing, and now delaying, the spread of the virus.

As of Sunday, the U.K. has a total of 1,395 positive cases of coronavirus and 35 people have died, according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University.

On Twitter, a growing number of people are questioning the official numbers, and the government's strategy to keep schools open as long as possible as well as museums, shops, bars and restaurants. In fact, many members of the British public are now pleading with the government to shut down public life, as other countries from the U.S. to Europe, are doing.

Some members of the public are also advocating a walkout of schools and workplaces with #covid19walkout also trending on Twitter.

On Sunday night, the U.K. government said it would start giving a daily press conference on the outbreak, and how the public can protect itself, and said it would meet with industries and communicate with international leaders to "drive forward efforts to curb the virus."

On Monday afternoon, Johnson will also chair a meeting of the U.K.'s emergency committee to coordinate the government's ongoing response to coronavirus. "The meeting is expected to include discussion on current modelling of the outbreak and next steps on plans around shielding elderly and vulnerable people, household isolation and mass gatherings," Downing Street said in a statement.

London's FTSE 100 index plunged Monday, trading 6.7% lower. It has fallen 34% since the start of the year.

Slow to respond?

The U.K. government had initially said it would not be carrying out mass testing on the population and advised the public that the best thing it could do was to wash hands properly, and said anyone with a fever or persistent cough should self-isolate for seven days. 

Having accepted last week that the outbreak moved from the "contain" phase to the "delay" stage, however, the government has not announced any immediate restrictions on public life.

The government noted that "in the coming weeks, we will be introducing further social distancing measures for older and vulnerable people, asking them to self-isolate regardless of symptoms" but said that "if we introduce this next stage too early, the measures will not protect us at the time of greatest risk but could have a huge social impact."

"We need to time this properly, continue to do the right thing at the right time, so we get the maximum effect for delaying the virus. We will clearly announce when we ask the public to move to this next stage. Our decisions are based on careful modelling. We will only introduce measures that are supported by clinical and scientific evidence," it said in a statement.

There was consternation, however, at comments made by the U.K. government's chief scientific advisor Patrick Vallance seeming to suggest that part of the government's strategy was to "broaden the peak" of it to avoid overwhelming demand and pressure on the National Health Service (NHS), and to allow a large part of the population to build up some immunity to the virus, a strategy known as "herd immunity."

Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson visits a laboratory at the Public Health England National Infection Service in Colindale on March 1, 2020 in London, England.

WPA Pool

The government backtracked from the comments this weekend after a group of over 200 scientists openly questioned the wisdom of that approach, telling the government in an open letter that they were concerned at plans to delay social-distancing measures. 

"Under unconstrained growth, this outbreak will affect millions of people in the next few weeks. This will most probably put the NHS at serious risk of not being able to cope with the flow of patients needing intensive care ... Going for 'herd immunity' at this point does not seem a viable option, as this will put NHS at an even stronger level of stress, risking many more lives than necessary." The scientists said that by putting in place social distancing measures now, "the growth can be slowed down dramatically, and thousands of lives can be spared."

"We consider the social distancing measures taken as of today as insufficient, and we believe that additional and more restrictive measures should be taken immediately, as it is already happening in other countries across the world."

Europe's shutdown

As the number of confirmed cases and death toll mounts in the region, many European countries have brought in restrictions on the public, closing schools and universities, museums, bars and restaurants and banning mass gatherings and even closing borders. 

In the worst hit countries of Italy and Spain, only grocery stores and pharmacies remain open as the southern European countries tackle their worst public health emergency in recent years. 

While Spain has imposed a 15-day nationwide lockdown, banning its 46 million citizens from all-non essential movement, the euro zone's largest economies France and Germany have closed large parts of their economies and fortified borders. In the U.S. too, New York City and Los Angeles have shut down bars, restaurants and other public places and Las Vegas has closed its casinos.

Despite (or perhaps due to) the lack of restrictions in the U.K., the public is fearful of an imminent lockdown and shortages, with widespread panic-buying seen at supermarkets with staples like toilet paper, pasta, soap and diapers stripped from the shelves. U.K. supermarkets pleaded with shoppers Sunday not to stockpile goods and to only take what they need.

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https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiYGh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmNuYmMuY29tLzIwMjAvMDMvMTYvY29yb25hdmlydXMtdWstcHVibGljLWJhY2tsYXNoLWFnYWluc3QtbGFjay1vZi1yZXN0cmljdGlvbnMuaHRtbNIBZGh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmNuYmMuY29tL2FtcC8yMDIwLzAzLzE2L2Nvcm9uYXZpcnVzLXVrLXB1YmxpYy1iYWNrbGFzaC1hZ2FpbnN0LWxhY2stb2YtcmVzdHJpY3Rpb25zLmh0bWw?oc=5

2020-03-16 09:11:53Z
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