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  • well for more on the Corona virus we crossed to our correspondent in London, Stewart Smith.

  • Thanks very much for joining us, Stuart.

  • So very big news to hear that the health minister of war people in the United Kingdom has the Corona virus On.

  • On top of that, she's had a lot of contact with parliamentarians and other ministers in cabinet and so on.

  • So what's the reaction?

  • Well, it is ashamed.

  • Yes, The minister in charge of public safety has develops and symptoms off the Corona virus.

  • She was tested yesterday and it came back positive.

  • And when it did, she made sure, as is the advice to contact Public Health England so they could begin contact tracing.

  • But, as you say, a very busy person who meets a lot of people on including the prime minister.

  • On International Women's Day, the government is refusing to say whether Mr Johnson, the prime minister, has been tested.

  • But as we can imagine, if he does begin to develop symptoms, he will be tested for sure.

  • The other problem, of course.

  • A busy MP has been voting on bills in the House of comments on we have over 600 MPs in the House of comments on dhe Voting is traditionally done in person in these rather small voting chambers, so could have come into very, very more contact could've come into contact with many more people through that way.

  • So she is praised by the health secretary, Matt Hancock, for taking all the right steps by self isolating on letting Public Health England know who she's been in contact with.

  • So I understand that the N hs that is the National Health Service in the United Kingdom is ramping up because it does believe that there's going to be a multiplication off cases.

  • Just tell us a bit more about what they're doing.

  • Yeah, the National Health Service is the UK is public health provider.

  • It's free at the point of contact Ondo testing about 2000 people at the moment every day.

  • What they want to be able to do is ramp up their testing procedure so that they contest for 10,000 people a day and try and get those the results back within 24 hours on DSO.

  • Doing that will hopefully mean that more cases could be identified more quickly, but it does also show that the UK is expecting to still see further exponential increases off cases off course.

  • We know that the health implications are very concerning indeed, but also the economic.

  • And we know that world bodies have come together to say we were making so much money available, the World Bank making $12 billion available.

  • But I am a $50 billion we're hearing about individual countries also putting money forward to deal with the health crisis.

  • And of course, we heard today that the B o.

  • E.

  • The Bank of England decided to cut rates by 50 basis points, and it's something that they've not done in a long time.

  • Speak to us about that.

  • Yes, sir.

  • The Bank of England has dropped rates from North 0.75 to north 0.25 which doesn't sound like a lot, but in relative terms, that's a cut of over half on.

  • This is designed to stimulate cash flow on to provide confidence within the economy.

  • The Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said he was particularly concerned about the small and medium businesses who may not have the resources to last over any major period off Corona virus measures So what they're also doing as well as lowering interest rates, is providing cheap loans to small and medium businesses to help them get over the peak off the Corona virus epidemic, which public health officials in the U.

  • K said is probably coming in the next 10 to 12 days straight before I let you go, I understand that people are really slowing down on going, shopping and just doing public things.

  • Is that your observation and perhaps slowing down on shopping?

  • But those who are going shopping are taking a lot.

  • There has been an issue with supermarket shelves being cleared off a toilet roll being the big one, which is not immediately understandable.

  • But toilet roll provisions have been lowered on.

  • Dhe, yes, some panic buying, but not much all rights to We're going to leave it there.

  • Thank you very much.

well for more on the Corona virus we crossed to our correspondent in London, Stewart Smith.

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