By the time people woke up here, normal life had bean suspended.

After nearly 6000 cases of covert 19 and more than 300 deaths in the early hours, the Italian prime minister announced drastic limits on people's lives way want to protect the health of all citizens.

We are aware that this will create our knees and that these measures will be a sacrifice big and small.

But this is the time to be responsible.

16 million people are now living under strict conditions.

The entire region of Lombardy, home to the financial capital Milan, is under lock down, but so are more than a dozen provinces and Venice.

You can't enter or leave these red zones without an exceptional reason.

Gatherings like weddings and funerals are suspended.

Restaurants and cafes can open till six PM, but must keep customers one meter apart.

Unfortunately, many people slipped out of the region before the shutters came down.

News of the lock down was leaked last night, giving people the chance to flee south.

People are being urged to stay put and stay at home.

But Sophie Bevin, whose family lives not far from Milan, says Some are ignoring the rules, and no one's really enforcing them.

People are still going on trips.

They still going down the supermarkets.

Luckily, as of this weekend, they've closed all the shopping centers.

The shopping centers are now closed every weekend there, open during the week, but they're close every weekend.

But you'll get groups of kids who have nothing to do at home who will take a bus because the buses are still running.

I'll go down to the local shopping centers and hang out a zit.

There was nothing wrong, and people just don't appreciate the seriousness of it, perhaps to ram it home.

The Italian government has released these pictures of a woman in her sixties with Corona virus being flown by military helicopter to a lumber Dee hospital here.

We've not seen anything like the spread of the virus in Italy.

273 people in the UK now have Cove in 19.

The government hasn't reached for so called social distancing measures yet, but it is introducing emergency legislation to protect the jobs of volunteers like the ST John Ambulance so they can stop work for four weeks to help the N HS.

We have around 10,000 committed volunteers who week in, week out, help out in their communities on we're talking about what role they could play going forwards.

Receiving paid time off work to volunteer for us would be a new step.

But it's something that we will explore with government because we want to play the fullest part possible in supporting the nation at our time of need.

Shoppers emptying shelves have forced three stores into rationing Tesco Waitrose online, restricting sales of some antibacterial wipes.

As there's some hand sanitizer, the prime minister said, people don't need to stock up.

We've had no advice from from the scientific advice is or the medical office that has any need for people to buy stuff in.

You know, if you think you've got symptoms, then the best thing to do a CZ you know is is to stay at home.

Contact the N hs Yes, absolutely way will make sure that we get the HHS all the sport a worthy investment needs toe with this crisis in the US, nearly 500 people in 32 states have tested positive for the Corona virus.

19 have died today, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said campaign rallies could have to be canceled.

But in China, the number of new infections is falling rapidly.

Every day, 57,000 people have recovered from the disease here.

32 people were also on the way home after their two week quarantine on the Wirral a precaution, but we may seem or preventative measures in the coming weeks.

Well, earlier, I spoke to Dr Riffat Ataman, professor of global health systems at Harvard University, and I began by asking him whether he thought the UK government should be acting more aggressively in dealing with the outbreak.

This is a very fine balance between being highly alarmists but also having delayed action.

What's important is that the government or the relevant authorities very rarely monitor with strong surveillance system exactly what's going on and take action.

But certainly one can take many actions.

For example, Regis ing all unnecessary trouble reducing, unnecessary of non essential domestic trouble, avoiding large traveled meetings.

This will certainly help a register peak in terms of the number of cases, but also delayed the epidemic to give us more time to prepare and to react.

So when you look at the fact that Italy is now locked down the entire region of Lombardy.

Have governments around the world got to think the unthinkable with this disease?

I mean, we're going to see at some point in the future London being locked down with improvisation.

What greater London's got a population?

Nine million?

Is that possible?

If the numbers continue to rise, that is going to one way off containing or dealing this epidemic.

You look how differently countries around the world are handling this I'm thinking about.

For example, Singapore had its first confirmed case on January 23rd.

The UK didn't announce its first confirmed case until over a week later.

Yet now we've got 273 cases.

They've got 150 obviously different population sizes.

But is there a different approach being adopted that the UK could learn from?

I sing overhead good experience from the source outbreak in the past, so they were able to act decisively and quickly, and they if they have systems in place to ensure that the policies were cascaded, they're rapidly.

They were able to trace contacts with the UK being a much larger governments and a much larger country.

Some of sometimes the policies are more difficult to implement.

So if you were advising Boris Johnson, Prime Minister Boris Johnson right now, what would you be advising him to do this week to get a grip on this situation So we don't see what's happened in Italy?

What's important in situations like this is that the authorities have full trust on the population.

So transparency, regular updates on the situation is critical.

Communication is very important.

Um, and brother delaying action.

One would have to take certain decisions, maybe in some pockets, as Italy did early on in Benetto and Armor division before the lock down, maybe clothes off some areas and may be banned.

Large meetings too, because we really need to Regis transmission and delay the epidemic.

So that way have enough time to respond.

Otherwise, the health system will be overwhelmed.

Refashion.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.