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  • it is eerily quiet in the town of Castle postal lingo.

  • The school in this northern Italian town is closed.

  • Bakery will only let people, and four to time residents outside this pharmacy have to wait.

  • This is in the heart of the Italian outbreak of Covered 19 in the Lombardy and Veneto region.

  • As yet, they don't know where the original case came from, and they don't know why.

  • Italy's numbers are so much higher than the rest of Europe.

  • The prime minister himself has acknowledged a degree of confusion and the handling of this way don't have regional frontiers.

  • So it is clear that in a coordinated handling of the situation, we must have measures that arm or effective and presented in a rational way.

  • Otherwise it becomes confusing because in different regions, but with similar conditions, they received different instructions.

  • What experts do believe is that Italy is likely to have more cases than have as yet been identified.

  • So today, UK travelers were told to self isolate for 14 days, even if they don't have symptoms if they have bean to the lock down areas of Italy and also the most affected cities and South career all of who?

  • Bay Province, at the epicenter of the epidemic.

  • And if they've traveled anywhere in Iran.

  • And if you've seen to northern Italy and develop symptoms, self isolate and call 111 Yesterday, Austria was looking at closing its borders.

  • Francois is advising people to take their temperatures twice a day and to use masks if they went out.

  • Why are we only doing this today?

  • Well, you've got to follow the advice and all the way through this.

  • We're balancing the need.

  • Thio.

  • Make sure that people take the right and action to stop the spread of the virus with the need to make sure that those actions are proportionate.

  • So you don't cause more harm, for instance, with the impact of the decisions that you take.

  • So one example is on flights from China.

  • I've had people in the past few weeks saying to me, Why don't we just stop all the flights from China?

  • The Italians did that, and now they have the largest outbreak in Europe.

  • 36 countries outside China have now reported outbreaks.

  • We cannot go out front or back the police car stationed at all interested thes holidaymakers air in quarantine and 10 reef after a guest fell ill with the virus.

  • In up to 80% of cases, the symptoms are mild, so people may not even know they have covered 19 making it all the harder to trace and all the easier to spread.

  • But he has it.

  • Iran's deputy health minister, Mopping, is sweating brow to press conference yesterday, a conference called to deny a cover up of covered 19 cases, and this is him.

  • Today, I'd like to inform you that I have been infected with Corona virus.

  • I had a fever yesterday.

  • My first test was positive last night, and I have isolated myself.

  • President Hassan Rouhani, on the other hand, says that enemies of Iran are conspiring to shut down the country through fearmongering about the virus.

  • Yet there are genuine concerns amongst world experts that the true scale of the outbreak in Iran has not.

  • Bean identified making it all the easier to spread to neighboring countries, especially those with wars and weak health systems.

  • Victoria McDonald and one of those travelers who's returned from Iran and is now in self isolation is that very own Jon Snow year, along with cameraman and producer who traveled with him.

  • Ah, following government guidance for those who recently returned from Corona virus hot spots on will be staying at home for the next two weeks.

  • I spoke to him just before we came on at.

  • Okay, I'm in self isolation as a result of having bean to Iran for the past four or five days on dhe and therefore not really supposed to congregate with any crowds or go anywhere, whether maybe, you know, people.

  • So that means I'm sitting at home for two weeks for two weeks.

  • And how do you feel?

  • Well, actually, I woke up this morning feeling rather tired, but that was from the trip, but we weren't actually anywhere near where the main virus outbreak has occurred.

  • You look fine.

  • You say you feel fine, you don't have a temperature.

  • And yet here you are, in your flat in north London and self isolation for two weeks.

  • It must feel rather odd.

  • And I wonder whether you feel worried but all about what might be happening.

  • Well, to be absolutely honest, the enormity on the prospect of 14 days hasn't really hit me.

  • I mean, I've bean doing things to catch up on things that I need to catch up on having bean in Iran and all the rest of it.

  • And I haven't really had time to work out how.

  • In fact I'm gonna handle this.

  • I must admit that I'm not very good with my own company.

  • I'm a very gregarious character.

  • That's why I like working Channel four news, which is a big you know, Happy home.

  • Mostly happy team on dhe, you know?

  • Therefore, it will be very, very strange.

  • And maybe if you call me again in 14 days, you'll find a head case on your hands.

  • You'll be missing out stone, even if it's very, mostly happy.

  • Thank you very much.

  • And stay well, Thanks.

  • Joining us now is Dr Rosalind Ago, the infectious and infectious disease model at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

  • Thanks very much for coming on the program again.

  • Italy.

  • 10 deaths in a fairly small number of days after only having reported an outbreak of cases.

  • You know, the weekend.

  • I mean, how worrying of those numbers in a place like it?

  • Well, now that the other cases have been found, the authorities, they're gonna be doing their very best to try and track down the contacts of cases and try and end the change of transmission that have been happening there in order to get control of the epidemic.

  • So they've contained these towns that are affected.

  • We've also noticed in China that containment seems to be working because the numbers infections are going down.

  • Is that is that fair to say?

  • It's very difficult to ascribe, you know, cause to effect.

  • But there have been, as you said, very strong interventions in China for over a month now, and that it does appear that the number of cases have been falling.

  • And so that's good evidence that it is possible to decrease transmission of this virus.

  • And what that's really done is both the rest of us.

  • A bit more time to prepare your model is so you're looking at projections into the future.

  • What are those numbers?

  • I mean, from from the evidence so far and how this thing spreads, tell us about the numbers that we can expect on this island.

  • It's really very difficult to say at this point.

  • It is too early.

  • The important thing for the UK is to understand where the cases are happening so far, toe.

  • Understand what rich they're up.

  • And to remember that so far in the UK, the cases that we've seen have been brought in from other places.

  • People who traveled and there hasn't been ongoing transmission from each of those for those people.

  • And the public health authorities in the UK are doing their very best to keep that keep that true for longest.

  • So the fact that the numbers of cases has not gone up here since last week does that mean that we're doing the right thing?

  • We just didn't know what else is out there.

  • It's very difficult to say what the right thing in the wrong thing is.

  • People are in the UK are public health agencies are doing their very best to prevent all more transmission from any cases that do arrive.

  • When I speak to scientists like that, what they constantly tell me is that what really worries him about this virus is what they don't know.

  • What don't we know?

  • Yeah, there's quite a quite a few things we don't know about the virus and some of their times from when somebody gets in fact infected toe when they start being infectious.

  • That's really important to know, because it impacts how easy it is to control what we really need to get a handle on at the moment.

  • It's what we call the pyramid of severity.

  • Okay, so this is if you have a pyramid and at the bottom you have cases that have very few symptoms.

  • You have mild cases, severe symptoms, and at the very top you have deaths.

  • But right now, we don't have a handle on how wide that is, and that will give us a much better understanding of the projected impact into the future.

  • And can we now say with certainty that it is possible to pass this disease on If you're not showing any symptoms off?

  • Haven't even tested positive because that seem to be quite a few cases like that.

  • There's some indications that there some early indications that you can transmit around the time that you begin showing symptoms.

  • But this is very preliminary data, and as you say, we need more.

  • We need more information.

  • Thio understand that better, Very briefly.

  • Children don't seem to be affected by it.

  • Is that true?

  • It's really difficult to say whether you know exactly the role of Children on DSO.

  • That's something that needs further study.

  • Thank you very much indeed for coming in.

it is eerily quiet in the town of Castle postal lingo.

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