Within the last few minutes, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, has announced that France and most European Union partners will close their borders to non European countries for 30 days from tomorrow at noon.

At the same time, the movement of French citizens will be strictly curtailed for at least 15 days.

Only essential travel will now be allowed in France, with infringements sanctioned.

Our foreign affairs correspondent Jonathan Rugman, has this report.

In France, the spring sunshine neared many Parisians outside in spite of the government urging people to stay at home.

It's also ordered nonessential shops, cafes and restaurants to shut apart from those delivering takeaways, schools and universities.

Air also closed on the second round of local elections has been postponed until June.

Which begs the question as to why the first round went ahead yesterday.

And the panic buying here is driven by an assumption that a total lock down Italian style is next.

It looks like the army is going to be called in.

It's gonna be like Italy will happen the same way.

No one will be allowed out.

I'm convinced about so we'll try and work from home.

Tell people to go home, stay positive and not start panicking in neighboring Italy, they need no warning.

Italians are notoriously not the world's best cures, but the virus has changed that nowhere is the daily death toll hire 368 yesterday, 349 today, and the government says the outbreak has not reached its peak yet.

I believe that in this kind of situation, we must be compliant and orderly.

I see that people are reacting positively.

Hope that it will end soon because I am exhausted.

Yesterday, the pope ventured with his bodyguards down the Via del Corso into a largely deserted Rome to pray before a crucifix dating back to the plague of the 16th century.

Next month's Easter service is in.

The Vatican will not be open to the public with ST Peter's Square on Basilica closed.

Let's keep praying for the sick people.

I think about families under lock down the Children not going to school.

Maybe the parents can't get out.

Some of them could be quarantined.

With much of Italy's economy slowing to a halt, there was one pleasant surprise in the canals of Venice.

Fish swimming in clear, bright water now that the polluting traffic from ferries, motor boats and cruise liners has sharply reduced in Spain, the epidemic appears to be spreading at its fastest rate.

In Madrid last night, the army was enforcing a lock down.

With almost 300 dead.

Spaniards can only leave their homes for specific purposes.

The country's health system is overwhelmed.

Spanish police entered a factory in the south of the country to seize 100 and 50,000 surgical masks.

So urgent is the demand from hospitals in the capital.

With the U now mulling whether to close its external borders for 30 days, the Germans have reintroduced their own controls, closing their frontiers to non essential travelers.

Commuters from France found it quicker to cross into Germany by foot rather than by car, though Europe's biggest economy insists that cross border trade is continuing, Schools have been closed in Germany until the end of April, and this afternoon, Chancellor Merkel ordered most non food shops to shut along with a list of venues including bars, theaters and Children's playgrounds.

Back in Italy, Europe's epicenter, this is a vision of what could follow not just hospitals but cemeteries struggling to cope this one is in Bergamo, in Italy's north, where the undertakers must wear masks and gloves where the car park is full of hearses, with grieving relatives only allowed in small numbers and required to stand apart for safety.

Well, as we've been hearing, the government has just stepped up its measures to stop the spread of the Corona virus.

But even before today's announcements, many businesses have started taking action to protect staff and customers on some parents had already started keeping their Children away from school.

Fatter.

Manji has been speaking to them a drastic protests designed to grab the attention of lawmakers.

In Westminster, the newly formed protest group pours the system dawned HAZ mat suits for their sitting outside Downing Street.

They want the government to take faster and deeper action with demands, including sick pay for a workers on a universal basic income.

What we need is to pause the system we need to go into lock down to give us a break from this economic system that's crippling us on the planet.

Before the government changed its advice to encourage people to work from home this morning, many had decided to take steps themselves Central London felt almost eerily quiet in parts and across the country.

Some parents chose to keep their Children away from school.

We've learned in one English county alone 20% of pupils didn't turn up.

This morning.

I emailed his school to say that we would be keeping him off indefinitely.

Um are reasons for doing that har because we have zero confidence in the government's plan.

I recently finished cancer treatment.

Um, my husband it up is asthmatic, and we both care for a hi.

I need a disabled child.

It's a really scary time for parents, but my biggest advice would be to just go down the health Roop on making sure that I'm building up my Children's immune system by serving lots of fruit veg.

Andi, I'm just not prepared to take the risk off my child going to school on potentially picking up this virus.

Those who run businesses centered around Children say much more guidance is needed.

It is very confusing.

I think child minders are finding it very confusing.

Obviously going forward, Children need somewhere to go, I think.

But we're not really sure what will happen if schools or nursery shutdown will.

That affect child minders, some small businesses of finding creative ways to continue working from home.

Yoga instructor Sam Roy has closed her classes but is now teaching meditation via video link sign are plenty of online platforms where we can easily meet.

The community can still gather.

They can share their experiences.

Breath, work together, meditate.

Others are still hoping they can continue as normal while introducing steps to keep staff and customers safe.

This south London cafe has gone cashless to keep contact minimal.

We've actually moved away from using all of our ceramics on dhe cutlery in stars.

And now we're using just the bio plastic cutlery that's disposable as well, a cz paper cups that are also disposable but on this so that there's no cross contamination possible.

But how long can normality continue?

Scenes at Downing Street this morning may have been a theatrical protest, but the fears felt around the country Riel and many are demanding much more clarity.

Fatima manky reporting more now.

The minnow enforced quarantines announced earlier and no orders to close premises.

But the advice was clear.

A request to the public to do something difficult, disruptive.

The prime minister described the steps the public is now being asked to take as draconian.

Here is some of the key public health measures announced by Boris Johnson at this afternoon's press conference Last week, we asked everyone to stay at home if you had one of two key symptoms.

High temperature or a new and continuous cough.

Today we need to go further.

If you anyone in your household has one of those two symptoms, then you should stay at home for 14 days.

That means that if possible, you should not go out even to buy food or essentials other than for exercise.

And in that case, at a safe distance from others, now is the time for everyone to stop non essential contact with others.

We need people to start working from home where they possibly can, and you should avoid pubs, clubs, theaters on dhe, other such social venues.

We should all only use the N hs when we really need to Aunt, please go online rather than ringing in hs 111 We advise against unnecessary social contact of all kinds.

It's right that we should extend that advice to mass gatherings as well.

This advice about avoiding all are necessary.

Social contact is particularly important for people over 70 for pregnant women and for those with health conditions with some health conditions.

When I'm joined here in the studio by Dr Baron Pan Kanye, a clinical lecturer in extra university and a former consultant of Public Health, England, and from Beckons Field, we have Professor Carol Sikora, who was chief of the cancer program at the World Health Organization and is now dean of medicine at the University of Buckingham.

And in Westminster, we have Dr Dominik Pimenta, a front line N hs doctor and cardiology registrar.

Inevitably, we're going to come to you a Doctor Pimenta first on I'm wondering what your reaction as a front line operative right now dealing with people coming in every day what you feel about today's measures.

That's a great question, John.

Thank you very much.

So the reason I'm here today predominately is because this morning in this afternoon we've published a letter from 1200 any chest frontline staff who are calling for the government to take drastic measures to reduce the amount of cases coming into hospital as small as possible.

So we have the capacity to cope.

The measures announced today are a step in the right direction, somewhat vindicating our concerns, but they don't go in my opinion far enough.

What we need to do is achieve the amount of cases coming in that we can safely deal with already.

We're running out of protective masks and goggles and the crisis hasn't really even begun yet.

There's a long term shortage of ventilators and even of oxygen.

What we need is time to prepare resources to protect ourselves.

And we need to return to the World Health Organization recommendation off mass testing so we can reduce the numbers as much as possible and save us time because that is the key thing that will get us through this.

We don't have the time to prepare and we're not ready.

Professor Secura, what's your reaction to that?

That reaction from the front line I think that's a reasonable reaction at the difficulty is the practicality.

If you really do look Oh really, Ukrainian measures close.

Everything absolutely prevent people getting out of that house.

It's especially those of high risk with comb or villages, multiple illnesses on elderly people.

It will be difficult to police so it's got to be a reasonable balance and I think it's what we've heard so far in great.

I was very worried on Sunday morning when I heard that the over seventies I'm 71 myself.

We're gonna be essentially cocooned.

I think this is unnecessary and one has to be reasonable.

What was trying to do is increase of disease burden as we help.

I heard on the health service by allowing people that are more likely than not to get into trouble if they get infected.

People with preexisting heart and lung disease.

People have other problems.

They're the people that really need to be careful.

Remember a healthy seven year old eyes probably at low risk than an unhealthy 50 year old Age is not a good criteria.

Here is the only criteria Doctor can't Petagna.

Then where are you on this?

I'm really better both with both my colleagues here.

But what I would say is this clear messages needs to be sent to the actress groups.

Professor Secura has identified that you can be lower than 60 years old.

Aunt, have Artress conditions on.

This needs to be articulated clearly on people like myself.

many off my colleagues have been talking about, you know, the clear messages that need for people who need to isolate and isolate as soon as possible on the subject off testing were very concerned because by not testing in the community, where losing precision on our cases are our knowledge of the cases on maybe identifying specific hot spots and a lot more other things.

Besides, well, let me just ask you then, Dominic Polenta, because France on Wednesday is going to actually lock people in their houses effectively.

It's gonna order people to remain indoors on for 30 days.

Is that what you want here?

I want to hear that the government is taking any measure, and by that I mean any measure that will reduce the number of cases coming into hospital on.

But we were talking about a virus with a two week incubation period, so anything we do today will not have any effect on the spread for another two weeks.

We have the better and mind is the cases rise exponentially.

The government could be doing a lot more, not only banning mass gatherings, but actually enforcing that ban, not only asking for self isolation in a few weeks time, but today, but also providing infrastructure to make that self isolation sustainable.

Making sure that elderly, elderly care there's food deliveries, they need to do a lot more almost on a war time footing.

To support that to actually be feasible as you are on the front line, I mean, just give us a sense of what is confronting you every day.

So it's gone rapidly from everybody, being almost skeptical that this would even happen to suddenly happening straightaway.

It's being very, very sudden.

We're trying to make as much as we possibly can on the front line preparations and literally changed plans are changing every single day.

As I said, we're already running out of the basic protective kit for us as N hs workers, which is our main concern.

And if we start losing frontline staff in a country where you really didn't have very many frontline staff on, we haven't organized anymore, Frontline staff were going to run into trouble very, very, very quickly.

Professor Sikora.

Is this thing under control?

Are you concerned that it is out of control?

No, I think it's under control, I think where we'll get through this by June, it'll get a lot better.

The evidence from China and career is that it's not great there in either country, but it's got a lot better in the last week than it was before.

And I think the same thing.

What happened in Italy, France and then us, and we have to get through it.

You met you mentioned career in particular, which seems a very, very interesting example.

But it's very difficult to tell why they've been so successful.

Uh, I guess, because they're better organized than we are on dhe.

You know, do health service.

Some Some countries have more capacity in the health service than we do.

We don't have that capacity.

It's what I'll tell you.

While Korea has succeeded, it did extensive testing extensive restriction of movement.

Early on.

As soon as it happened, Korea went for it and said, We're going to test.

We're going to identify who is at risk and then you stop the contacts off the case that assumes that had the testing kits and the rest we seem to be short of testing.

Kids were sort of ventilators, sort of them or lose everything.

We're not short of testing kits where we may be short of other things.

But my main point is this a few stops the rising tide.

You will create fewer cases for my colleague over there to handle.