This is part of the new updated public awareness campaign against covered 19 hand washing is still at the forefront of the fight against the virus.

Every country has their own version.

We found this one from Vietnam.

However, the messages put across the it is becoming critical as numbers are reducing and China they're growing elsewhere today has seen the biggest leap and covered 19 cases in the U.

K so far and public health officials are, of course contact tracing.

But they have also said that at least three of the 32 new cases in England were passed on here, giving rise to fears that community transmission is now taking hold.

The four phases for dealing with this outbreak are contain.

That's where we are now.

Delay research and mitigate.

Today, the prime minister was asked about the potential for parliament and MPs to spread the virus, and he appeared to suggest that we are about to move from contain to delay the chief medical officer in the chief scientific adviser.

Together with my friend, the health center will be saying a little bit more on this couple of days about what we're going to do to delay Theat Vance of Corona bars were still at the containment stage.

A.

She will understand the distinction that the government is is making.

When we come to the delay phase, she will be hearing a lot more detail about what we propose to do with large gatherings in places such as Parliament.

It's not just large gatherings.

A small study following the shall A outbreak in France has found that meals at home and and restaurants could be risky.

For example, Transition shall A in France meal In Hong Kong.

We gathered about nine of these events and tried to look at the risk and an estimated that in these situations about 35% of the contacts of the case had it subsequently become infected.

There is a lot of happen off transmission happening.

Each case, an average is probably infected two or three others.

So if you think of the average person's number of contacts that suggest there may be a fairly high risk per contact for that amount transmission to subsequently occur.

The crux of the public health message is that everyone must play their part.

This has led to a run on hand gels.

This company link, oh CARE, has just received orders for one million bottles, and that's likely to increase.

In the meantime, a spot check on four pharmacies today found the shelves empty.

And what about face masks?

The chief medical officer has said that wearing them has almost no effect on reducing the risk of contracting the illness.

Today in Italy, the police raided a warehouse where masks and disinfectants of being sold online at hugely marked up prices, making money in the face of a disaster.

And Italy is in the midst of a crisis.

They've had more than 3000 cases, and today they announced that schools across the country will be closed until March the 15th.

So okay, I know this decision will have an impact.

As schools minister, I hope pupils can return to school as soon as possible.

On my commitment is to ensure that the essential public service orbit from the distance is provided to all our students.

It's a measure other countries have also taken, but one the U.

K government has so far resisted, experts say, their social consequences parents not being able to work, for instance, and it is still not clear how the virus is affecting the young Victoria McDonald reporting well, Italy.

I spoke to Dr Bruce Elbert from the World Health Organization.

You recently returned from China, where he collared the W H O mission on covered 19.

I started by asking him about Italy's decision to close universities in schools in response to the virus.

Frankly, they may know more than we're seeing in the news on dhe.

They may have concerns that are are causing them to move that way.

Generally, what you want to be doing, though, is looking at what are the drivers of transmission in your community?

Where are people getting infected and how and that should then drive what you're doing.

But there are many factors that affect the decisions to to to close schools.

Do you think that we should be thinking about closing schools in this country where the rate of infects, while the number of infections seems to be a lot lower than it is in Italy?

Well, I think what you want to be thinking about is, Are you doing the basics and then the graduate things up, Matt.

So the first thing does the whole population of, you know, the UK Do they understand what they're looking for?

This is not a cold.

It's something different.

Did they understand that?

Are they hand washing?

Are they doing all those preventive measures?

Is that rapid case isolation or identification piece in place and the ability to find the coast contacts and quarantine them et cetera, And then as you move up through those, then you start looking at okay, Do we need to suspend large gatherings because of the weight this virus is moving?

And no, I would agree with you.

It doesn't seem like like you're there yet your boss, the head of the W.

J, put out a mortality rate number yesterday that had us all gasping frankly, 3.4% mortality rate for those infected, which is quite a lot higher than the 1% that we were kind of dealing with roughly beforehand explained that number to us and why he's now made that public.

Well, when you look at the numbers in China, there's different numbers, right?

And I think one of the things that worried the Director General was that people were cherry picking the lowest possible numbers and they were They were underestimating what this disease could actually do.

And the number that you heard yesterday.

That's if you take from the beginning of the outbreak, including Wuhan in the area's worst hit right through to today and all of China, the number is over is over three on DDE.

What people often do is they just look at those provinces outside of Julia and and where Wuhan is and they calculate from once people really knew what they were doing and they say Okay, at that point it was down around 1% or under 1%.

But you know, what the director general was highlighting was, if you don't get on this fast, if you don't know what you're doing, if you're not taking care of your older population properly, this is going to have worse mortality than you're expecting.

Okay, So when you went to China, what did you discover there?

That should become a lesson to all of us all over the world.

I think the critical things that China did well where first of all the population knew what it was looking for it they knew what this disease was.

They knew where to go to get tested, and they could be isolated and taken care of very, very quickly.

People were part of the solution.

They were the surveillance system.

You weren't waiting for it to walk into hospitals and infect the hospitals.

They had a very well in foreign population.

Then they had planned the capacity to be able to isolate these debate cases, and they planned the capacity be able to find the coast contacts, quarantine them, and then take care of them for the 14 days in which 5 to 10% of them would become cases on big take wings are those.

And what worries me, Always mad as everyone starts with, we can't do a China did.

And I said, Well, why not?

They said, Well, we can't locked out a whole city Nice.

Well, China didn't either.

There thousands and thousands of cities, they locked down a few, which where it had really gotten out of control.

But still, it's a much bigger countries.

Well, I mean, they locked down effectively 60 million people, which is virtually the whole population of the UK.

Can you seriously imagine this government doing something similar in a country like ours.

I would be seriously surprised and frankly disappointed if the country ever got into a situation where they even have to contemplate that.

And the great thing you're seeing Matt, is that, you know, remember this.

It's not a function of the virus.

Whether or not you get in a situation like China's.

It's a function of how you respond and what you're seeing as a result of the work of public health thing than the any chess, et cetera.

Is there fighting these cases fast jumping on the transmission chains?

They're getting them under control.

You should never get in.

That situation should ever have to even contemplate it.

There's a big debate about closing down schools, and, of course, the Italians, you know, said they would imminently do.

What's the point of closing down schools of kids, according to the evidence?

A very unlikely to get this.

We actually don't know what happens with Children in this disease.

It appears that they're less likely to get infected.

It appears that the less likely to get a sick.

But a lot of that may be an artifact of the fact that this happened in China at the start of the Spring Festival because, remember the Spring Festival in China, all the schools are closed for two weeks, and then they extended them.

So we don't really know what would have happened if Children were exposed to big doses of this thing in school environment.

Would they have gotten sicker?

We don't know.

Probably not in my mind.

But would they have carried the virus back to their families and caused more outbreaks that way?

Quite possibly.

We simply don't know.

So one of the things we're looking at in places like Italy and and and others that get infected our do have we seen any school clusters that might other result in more sickness kids or help spread it.

So far, the evidence isn't there.

And it's one more, you know, piece of the puzzle that we haven't got the tools to study property.

Yet you soon will be that way.

Yeah, Okay.

Just just to bring it back to Britain, and we just had the numbers out over 80 cases now in this country.

It was 50 yesterday.

What can we infer from that?

Your cases are increasing.

Quite obviously, it's hard to infer from the number.

What we need to know, where they geographically clustered and clustered in time and clustered around certain events.

Or are these just popping up all over the country?

And it's It's evidence of widespread transmission that had been missed, mild cases that have been missed.

So the number itself doesn't tell you anything or everything.

What it may be telling you is the population is way more aware they're getting the much more fast, and that could be a very good sign.

You came back from China 10 days ago.

I got the one to self isolating.

You isolate the people who are the cases, right?

So I'm unclear in the not a case, I don't know because you've been tested.

Yes, actually, I have been tested.

I'm not a case.

Well, I'm not.

I'm not ill.

Let's say the second thing is I'm not a close contact of anyone, so I'm not quarantined.

So isolation is what you do for the case so the virus doesn't spread.

Quarantine is what you do for someone who is a contact.

So if they get infected, they won't spread in the meantime, but But you're not isolating in the sense of they have the virus.

I wasn't even.

Let's say a low risk contact.

Never came in contact with any cases.

Never came in contact with any known contacts.

Remember, I went into Wuhan.

15 million people were in apartment buildings.

I was in a big empty bullet burned by myself.

Our team.

We think we came in less contact with people in Wuhan than anywhere I've been since Dr Bruce over.

Thank you very much for your time.

My pleasure.

Thank you.

On later in the programme will have a special report from inside Wuhan on the front line with medical staff, we see the scale of human endurance in defied to quell the virus.

But with Corona virus expected to spread more quickly in the weeks to come, there are serious concerns about the possibility that low paid workers will feel obliged to come to work while infected because they can't afford not to be paid.

Today, Boris Johnson announced that the government will be changing the rules to allow sick pay to be claimed from the first day workers for ill rather than on the fourth day as at present, Fatima Manji reports the reality of becoming unwell on the low wage has long been a hidden problem in Britain, one that the fears around Corona viruses now exposing.

Last night, Channel four news highlighted how contract workers in the N hs like cleaners have often been reluctant to stay at home when sick because of the financial impact.

One time a patient asked me, Why did you come to work sick?

I had to explain.

Unfortunately, we're not paid if we stay at home and I can't afford that being on minimum wage today, the prime minister announced emergency laws meaning all employees self isolating because of Corona virus, will now be entitled to statutory sick pay from the first day they're off.

It's like today announce that the health secretary will bring forward as part of our emergency Corona virus legislation measures to allow the payment of statue tree sick pay from the very first day you were sick instead of four days.

Under the current rules, this is only a temporary measure, but it's employers who bear the cost of it.

So small businesses may now demand financial support from the government, and there are many workers in Britain who won't be entitled to it all the self employed and some of those on zero hour contracts.

The government's directing those people to claiming universal credit so universal credit.

You've got the five week weights, which is no notorious on DDE.

That is no good.

And if you are at home and being told to self isolate for two weeks or more without food, maybe without some of the appliances that you need to be able to store food at home for long times like freezers, these are really vulnerable.

People were telling them to wait five weeks, and we know universal credit isn't working.

It needs to be reviewed.

So putting people into a system that is broken isn't going to do them any good at all.

The government says it will look at issues around universal credit, and claimants can apply for an advance from Day one.

But trade unions argue today's emergency legislation doesn't go far enough as statutory sick pays too low.

At £94.25 a week, the proportion of salary that statutory sick pay covers in the UK is amongst the lowest in Europe.

For example, Luxembourg covers 100% of employee's salaries But the UK covers just 20% of the national average wage.