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The British government has announced strict controls on movement, telling people to stay at home in a lockdown that will be enforced by the police.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the plan in a rare televised address to the nation, after an additional 52 people in the country died from the virus.
“From this evening, I must give the British people a very simple instruction, you must stay at home,” he said.
The British move follows the imposition of strict lockdowns in France, Spain, and Italy, and slightly looser restrictions elsewhere, as Europe reels from a pandemic that the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned is accelerating.
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WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Monday noted that while it took 67 days for cases to reach the 100,000 mark globally, it took only 11 for cases to reach 200,000 and just four to reach 300,000.
More than 6,000 Italians have now died from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, nearly double the confirmed number of deaths in China where the virus first emerged late last year.
In the United States, the number of cases surged past 35,000, as the death toll rose to 495.
Nearly 16,500 people have died from COVID-19 about the world, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University. Nearly 101,000 of the 379,000 people who have been diagnosed with the disease have recovered.
I’m Kate Mayberry in Kuala Lumpur with Al Jazeera’s continuing coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.
Here are the latest updates:
Tuesday, March 24
00:15 GMT – New Zealand reports 40 new cases
New Zealand on Tuesday confirmed 40 new cases of coronavirus, taking the number of confirmed and possible cases in the country to 155.
Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said six people were in hospital and in a stable condition. Four cases are being seen as community transmission, he said.
00:00 GMT – Astronauts in quarantine before ISS mission
Two Russian cosmonauts and a US astronaut are spending their final weeks on Earth in quarantine before their April 9 mission to the International Space Station.
The Expedition 63 crew will launch from Kazakhstan without the usual ceremonies to mark the occasion and will spend six months at the ISS.
“We are ready to go, we are healthy, we’ve been tested very well with the medical teams,” the US astronaut Chris Cassidy said on Monday in a video from quarantine.
For all the updates from yesterday (March 23) please click here.
SOURCE:
Al Jazeera and news agencies
