Cases. I think you know other countries in nigeria for example within 48 hours of the 1st case nigeria had established 100 bed isolation units so. But i think the development of the clinical support and Isolation Services is on even. While it may be present at National Level one of the things we found during the a ball outbreak was reproducing preparedness at sub National Level at district level is is another challenge that we need to address so our work now is moving the preparedness activities from the National Level down to the district level in countries in africa but i think we are pleased with the developments so far we believe there may be an element of underdiagnosis is some countries. Were chasing that in trying to activate surveillance on the whole continent. Thank you. To our to the. Free countries in africa have been our focus. Were very much encouraged by the progress we have made through our Regional Office after all and also the africa c. D. C. As you know a major concern was you know the introduction of this virus in countries with weaker health systems. Our focus from the beginning was where our concern is so there is progress but at the same time we will continue to build on what we have been doing and africa will continue to be our focus. Especially in building capacity and improving the overall preparedness so more of course their journey of odeo to the question of. More thing is that in addition to what were trying to do in terms of providing guidance and support some kids and building on existing systems that are there theres a training element that weve been working on and given the demands on everybodys time in the demands on and peoples ability or inability to come face to face were trying to look at innovative ways in which we can translate some of our training materials through unlined courses and through interactive sessions so that we can speak clinician to clinician i. P. C. Specialist i. P. C. Specialist to provide that one on one support where that is needed and so that will continue as this situation evolves. If youre watching katrina in the room. This is a clean shot comic and our cars and. Id like to to have. Your reaction about whats happening in italy they have a shortage of equipment of supply they need more else workers how do you want fully directed to be expressed are there some chinese elf workers that are going to go to italy or else for workers from countries that are not affected is there a plan for there and is w a chore according eating the platform for these kind of support and ella help thank you. Weve been obviously working through our Regional Office and a regional director and slugger has been i think twice in italy in the last couple of weeks working with that we have had a team on the ground for the last 2 weeks in italy. In the epicenter of the outbreak the d. G. Has deployed to assistant director general right neary who is in the and has met with senior officials in the Italian Government over the last 24 hours to discuss just those issues around how do we provide further Strategic Support to the government of easily particularly in managing the heavy case loads that they have i nor did they try to go into reaching out to their partners in the European Union as well and we hope to see that solidarity within the union to support really china have definitely offered support and were working in a tripartite with china to look at the supply particularly of things like p p ventilators and other issues but obviously thats a work in progress but again we think china for its solidarity in trying to prioritize supply chains to a country like italy and to countries like iran. Clearly are willing to discuss with still be a joe and coordinate with the v. A. Joel where the best targets are for the surplus equipment they may have and you know chinas been through it and theres not that much surplus but they are willing very very willing to work with us to see where thats most needed them are grateful for that but if youve had some level discussions with various parties so you know which is the support. And weve been watching and the World Health OrganizationNews Conference from geneva where they have Just Announced that the Coronavirus Crisis has been a change from an epidemic to a pan that make it speak to dr eric toner whos a Senior Scientist at the Johns Hopkins center for Health Security he joins us now via skype from the city of baltimore dr toner thank you so much for joining us youve actually been saying that this is a pandemic for some time now so whats your reaction to this announcement from the w. H. O. Why do you think theyre making it now. Well im very glad that theyre making this announcement i think its been obvious as you said to many of us that it has been endemic for several weeks. And i think. Any ambiguity about that there were Global Situation this deceases farting around the world it will continue to spread around the world every country will be affected and so i think this clears up any confusion could you clarify for us please what the actual difference is between an epidemic and a pandemic so what coronavirus has been so far and what its become now according to the w. H. O. Well theres no university agreed upon definition of a pandemic can make literally means all people and but commonly with and Public Health we talked about a pandemic meaning you had sexual diseases that spreading person to person on multiple continents so thats been the case for several weeks. During the show seems to also consider to mean that all people are at risk of the disease and i think thats failure and i think that it is now obviously the case with this disease. We heard from dr ted the director general of the w. H. O. He said he was deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of the spread and severity of the corona virus but also what he said the alarming levels of in action what do you think that w h os actual message is to governments around the world in the clearing the Coronavirus Crisis a pandemic i think theyre saying to all governments if you really need to get ready it really you know kicking need to implement a measure is to slow the spread in your own country and so some countries have. Been denying that there are countries that risk or saying that they have no cases when thats probably not that not actually true so i think you are saying to them really you have to get ready explain to us what that would mean though for countries that are seeing a rise in cases but not situations as alarming as perhaps iran or italy. Where we have to understand the nature exponential growth. So this disease seems to have a. 6 or 7 day doubling time that means twice as many cases each week so the most people are sick have a mild illness much like influenza and theyre not going to come to the attention of Health Authorities its not until you get hundreds of cases that theres any chance that a country would recognize they have cases as probably not until there are thousands of cases they were really become quite obvious at the doctor so forgive me for interrupting know that you have to go and this is the final question i want to put to you if countries do what i guess that the show is suggesting that they do when do you think or where do you think well see the peak of of the infections around the world when do you think that some sort of normality might return well i think it will be a different peak in every country so china r. E. C. Not speak. And maybe south korea has as well so itll be it will probably be an outbreak within each country that lasts for a couple months and then dont move on but yet it may come back again later. This will continue to spread until most people eventually are infected dr eric toner a Senior Scientist at the Johns Hopkins center for Health Security sir thank you so much for having a shared your views and experience with us thank you. Well so this announcement by the late show as the coronavirus of course continues to fuel fears that europe could slip into recession several countries are resorting to sweeping measures to fight the epidemic lets talk now kony varchar who joins us in the studio i mean its interesting how its almost 2 ways of talking about it is the health care and then every country obviously understandably i guess worried about the economy because of the impact that a coronavirus epidemic and pandemic could have on their economies so how do you think that this message by the w. H. O. Will be welcomed by a lot of governments i think what the clear message is that all countries need to see this is being clearly much much more than a health issue it goes beyond that its a political issue its an economic issue there isnt a single country here in the european in the europe that is not going to be in some way shape or form affected by that but is the clear distinction in the nature of made by calling this a pandemic over an epidemic and that requires some aggressive preparedness what weve seen in the last couple of days is the e. U. 27. 00 come together to try and coordinate efforts to come up with a Coronavirus Task force with whatever. Strategy the task force may now work out its really down to them to try to roll that out in the coming days individual countries are taking their own strategies here in the United Kingdom there isnt at the moment any kind of strategy to reduce gatherings of people or to check peoples temperatures at airports and things like that the british approach is very much based upon science and against mitigating the problem further down the line but there is a feeling now that this dog the w. H. O. Of call this a pun demick that perhaps governments need to Start Talking and they were very clear i mean dr ted rose the director general said you know obviously mentioned the alarm of the spread in the health of repercussions but the alarming levels of inaction by their government. Then even though we see governments that dont have that many cases kind of tinker around the edges as opposed to address it head on your work with the other 81 countries in the world the company dont have any cases of the coronavirus and that doesnt mean that they should sit back on their laurels and hope for the best the message very much is that if there are no cases of the coronavirus all levels are very low the countries should continue with whats called the containment stage to try and reduce the possible spread the virus the next stage is the delay stage to avoid putting Health Services in Different Countries under strain and once that is no longer a pickle were talking about the research and mitigation stage hopefully by that point well be talking about vaccinations and other ways of treating the virus wherever it may go next nieve marker with the latest on that thank you and scar live now to natasha partner who is in paris for a sense that it may be i guess a little bit early to expect some kind of reaction from the french government to this announcement by the by the w. H. O. But generally speaking however theyve been handling or how do they plan to handle an expanding crisis their rights. Well there are already over 1700 diagnosed cases of the corinna virus in france more than 30 people have died and of course those numbers are going up all the time and for the past few weeks the french government has been on something of a war footing for this Health Crisis a National Emergency very call it they say that the hospitals are prepared they say that there are enough testing kits there are enough responder tree machines at least for the time being but of course each day the situation is evolving theyve already put in a raft of measures in place restrictions in certain clusters zones these a cost as zones where there are a high number of infected people so perhaps travel is restricted there people arent able to go to work schools are closed theyve banned many public gatherings in fact all gatherings inside of more than a 1000 people have been banned to try and stop the spread of this virus because that is the french governments tactic they say theres nothing we can do about it being here is amongst us in the population of france but we need to try and stop the spread but of course as i said it is at all levels of the french population weve seen this week the french culture minister diagnosed with a corona virus hes at home in isolation other ministers are being tested to see where the perhaps they had it because of course they came into contact with him 5 m. P. s and 5 members of the French Parliament also diagnose of the current virus so it really is at all levels of society here in france that i should follow with the latest from paris that hashes thank you. Of course frances neighbor it is really is being the worst hit country in europe one of the worst hit in the world and the government there is considering taking even tougher measures to try to contain the outbreak as 827. 00 people are now known to have died so i get a cat of those overall or just at the tally a National Institute of health she says it took people initially a while to realize the severity of the crisis there was a difficulty i think in the early stages to really understand what this was about of course in the scientific field this had been known for a while w. H. O. Had issued a Public Health emergency very early on but this you know coming to everybody had to be translated and had to be understood properly so i think this now is something that is happening people are starting i think to gain awareness and were really trying to push and explain why certain measures are in place. I think what we learnt initially is that this is unfortunately a virus that spreads very well its a new virus which means a lot of susceptible people can get sick at the same time i think we shouldnt underestimate it i think we should be very careful about how to move and move properly and fast with the right level of proportion also in italy clearly the situation is not the same across the country there are Different Levels of action that are required and i think its also very important early on to get people on board because finally this is a battle that will all will together this really needs to be something which were all fighting against in our every day life and changing our behaviors. Lets go live now to kristen salumi who is in new york for a so kristen that announcement of just under an hour ago by the w. H. O. It is now officially a coronavirus pandemic what reaction from the markets there. Yeah the markets were already down and that announcement sent them down even lower the dow has plunged to 1200. 00 points lower now more than almost 5 percent and this is true across the major stock indexes here in new york and across stock sectors the uncertainty over the spread of the coronavirus as more people stay home and the governments lack of response here in the United States so far has investors very shaky weve seen. Issues with stocks in a number of sectors and including airlines and cruise lines perhaps some of the most hardest hit they were down smore than 7 percent earlier today they continue to be lower with all of this Uncertainty Oil prices are another concern weighing on the markets here the price war that started between saudi arabia and russia impacting Energy Companies here in the United States it was actually the Largest Oil Producer in the world with prices down that could hurt shale producers who have high amounts of debt the markets are worried about that as well and even earlier in the day when we heard from u. S. Secretary treasury secretary steven nutrition and that they were on the verge of working out an initial response to the coronavirus they were planning to introduce something with house leadership in the next 48 hours there were no specifics in that plan and it did not help the markets give them any more confidence at all so really a down day fueling the concerns as well youve got major Financial Companies and their economists lowering their forecast for growth in the coming months and that also has people talking about the possibility of a recession coming forward even though the United States has had a very strong. Data underneath it all on the job growth has been good the g. D. P. Is. At a record level for the last 2 years the uncertainty Going Forward really has investors spooked in that it seems to indicate a lack of confidence that white house and congress are going to get together anytime soon with a plan well to see if that lack of confidence is justified lets cross to the white house and chris salumi thank you for your contribution lets speak to kimberly how kit was our White House Correspondent so do you think that those fears are perhaps justified how organized has the u. S. Government machine be at tackling this crisis. Yeah there are so many different facets working all at once in tandem lets start with the financial aspect there is a lot of nervousness concern about how this will affect the u. S. Economy thats what we know that the u. S. President at 980 hill be holding a meeting with wall street executives here at the white house as they try to come up with different remedies to sort of calm some of those market jitters that christine was talking about but then when you go to some of the public alarm that is occurring we also know that there are discussions underway as many people in the United States continue to really fear for the spread of coronavirus in the United States now in a majority of u. S. States as we know that the Coronavirus Task force has been weighing a number of different options in terms of containing the spread of that virus were not sure if this will be some sort of guidance that will be issued through executive order but we are hearing that there will be aggressive steps taken in order to see that local communities have the tools they need to stem the serves or sort of counter the spread of the corona virus one other thing that were hearing is that there may be soon and then now its meant coming from the white house in terms of some kind of disaster declaration what that would do is free up some 40000000000 in emergency funding in order to give local communities the resources they need to counter the spread of the virus kimberly perhaps this may go a little bit beyond your remit as White House Correspondent but as an observer of all things american of course you do live there what do you make of the Public Opinion there about this fire and do people in the states still see this is something thats affecting china increasingly parts of europe or do you sense almost a fear now perhaps creeping in the american public. Things changed in about the last 24 to 48 hours i would say up until then there was kind of a normalcy bias that it cant happen here it wont affect us people are pretty relaxed but thatll change kind of over the weekend the start of early this week thats when you started to hear ordinary folks that out till now have been brushing things off going in stocking preparing making sure that house little sentinels were in place and also making sure that they had medications in place as were hearing more and more about the spread of this in europe inching ever closer to the United States i think people really woke up when they heard that there was now 1 an enforced quarantine happening in the suburbs of new york city in the area of new rachele once the National Guard was brought in you know thats where people are not allowed to leave their homes and if they do you know they could be faced with an armed presence that is really a dramatic shift in the United States certainly no ones using words like martial law or anything like that but its so very close the Public Health officials using language that americans are not familiar with so this is what has made it real for so Many Americans and i can tell you many are already putting in place a selfimposed quarantine and they are working from home if they can and many schools in the area cross the United States taking steps to keep Children Home as well this has become very real for the average american not just those on wall street can really help with the latest from the white house kimberly as always thank you. Well kept out as a ministry of Public Health has registered 238 new confirmed cases of corona virus the infections were confirmed in Foreign Workers who live in one that residential complex and who had been quarantined as a precautionary measure after coming into contact with 3 other people who had the virus that are now has a total of 262 cases. While a surge of new cases in south korea has reversed 4 consecutive days of the client the discovery on wednesday of a large cluster of infections has that matched hopes that the country had its outbreak under control Scott Hartnell reports. Despite ongoing disinfection efforts throughout south korea theres been a reverse in the downward trend of corona virus cases the largest cluster yet discovered in the capital seoul at least 90 workers at a call center tested positive they worked in a building near a transportation hub in the southwest of the city home to 10000000 koreans. Only just and so city officials are conducting an investigation they are also taking measures such as cell phone seen and diagnostic checks on those who are in close contact with the infected and in australia the Prime Minister announcing that italy joins china south korea and iran on its travel ban list australians and foreigners with residency visas returning from italy will face a 14 day self quarantine italy itself has effectively put itself into lockdown with travel now and this largely causes that loop we already had the enhanced screening measures the replies and a remarkable rescue in southeast china after being buried for 69 hours a man pulled from the rubble of a hotel for a virus patients in coron team the hotel in the city of chen joe collapsed on saturday killing at least 26 people the 24 year old survivor is in a stable condition in hospital scott heiler aljazeera. Well neighboring chad. And south korea have both seen significant outbreaks north korea has not reported a single case of coronavirus but with the weak Health Care System and limited medical supplies experts fear that it could be a show of bravado from a country that would struggle to cope if an outbreak did take hold robert pride reports staff in the south korean capital seoul. It is a country used to being mobilized against a common enemy and now that one scene photo is the coronavirus an outbreak could be devastating for a population which is malnourished and with primitive medical services those populations in the countryside away are really you know they have been left on the our own with regards to basic axises from the start its taken tough measures like closing its border with neighboring China Foreign diplomats were port andras strict 30 day quarantine which is only just been lifted many have left. And there is a certain tension in those in the city and all over the country because people are aware. Of the crime of violence state run television has been showing the Global Impact of the disease and touting the north success in preventing a single case of the virus as a victory for leader kim jong un whos depicted as heading his countrys efforts kim jong un has written to his south korean counterpart expressing his sadness for the way the viruses hit the south and while the outbreak has disrupted military operations here with the cancellation of joint exercises with the u. S. For north korea it seems to be business as usual. Twice in the space of a week north korea has conducted short range weapons tests after a low of 3 months some analysts say its just part of regular winter exercises while others add that with denuclearization talks in stalemate he has nothing to lose by testing and that it sends a strong message to his own people that with much of the rest of the world grappling with the viruses spread kim is firmly in control and appearing to keep them safe rob mcbride aljazeera soul. Well as weve been discussing the virus has had a massive Economic Impact across the world and profits have plunged that Cathay Pacific as its become one of the Many Airlines is suffering as the spread of the coronavirus the stripes Global Travel that interest scale is editor of asian aviation a Civil Aviation magazine and he says some carriers will be more affected by the crisis than others. The carriers that do not lease aircraft are probably a little bit better off because they dont have to make those lease payments airlines that have a lot of least aircraft. There and if they can negotiate. Different Payment Terms with the lesser wars a lot of whom are in ireland. And they might be in trouble. There are airlines like cathay d the big airlines. That have consolidated in recent years a lot of the American Airlines is basically 3 big carriers there. A lot of those are probably going to be fine theyre definitely going to take revenue hit they may lose money for a quarter or 2 again it depends on how long this is going to go on the International Air transport association has basically called for blanket slot relief around the world they have this 8020 rule where you have to fly 80 percent of the flights in order to maintain the slots the interesting thing is the Airport Council international which is the trade group for the airports they say no it should be on a market by market basis because if airlines quit flying to those airports in those airports start losing money so theres a little bit of an argument going on between the 2 entities. And again if Airlines Just quit flying i mean thats going to be a huge problem. Also to comment on visitor will be looking at some of the days other news including the man convicted of the lockerbie bombing is allowed an appeal bid 80 years after his this. Field your album your live album youre a little anger outside australias highest court as the popes treasurer fights and child Sexual Assault and fictions. Welcome back well stop to look at the weather across the Arabian Peninsula and levant region here in qatar and around the gulf states the weather is fantastic 26 degrees in the sunshine to my back on that region because really this area of low pressure developing across parts of egypt is going to be quite intense and its light to produce some extremely heavy rainfall and flash flooding in this part of the world is always a big house in these situations where you have got right in the cup a lot of lift the dust around where i think really significant accumulations of rain are going to cause some real problems across northern parts of egypt extending into the sinai and indeed the front associated with this really standard the parts of saudi arabia so expect some flooding rain here and again that could be really a risk to life and limb as that rain begins to fall down the brain itself extending into parts of iraq during the course of the day so lets head up now into northern and central parts of africa where associate of this low pressure system weve got a northerly wind which is driving there not just through the coast of libya but all way down into more southern areas and into northern parts of chatter so there will be a significant drop in temperature here and probably a fair amount of lifted dust as well developing over the next few days across parts of west africa will likely see some heavy showers abidjan in the ivory coast as brisk 29. Journey both dark. Blue theres a very for everybody there is a lot of corruption and Beautiful Lake a beautiful lady you have to be very patient and would easily see. How i was introduced to. My father and my mother or or for king for her personal story to discover the source one of the most expensive commodities sent from had. Welcome back heres a reminder of the top stories on aljazeera the World Health Organization has the clearer the coronavirus outbreak to be a pandemic that classes it as spreading globally not just an epidemic of smaller localized outbreaks official said he wouldnt change the response but criticized what they called the alarming levels of inaction by governments. Has been are still seeing this outbreak around the globe and were deeply concerned by the alarming levels of spread and severity and by the amount of mean levels in action. We have therefore made to be our system and that 19 can be characterized as a pandemic. Under me is an old award to use lightly. Carelessly. Italy meanwhile has announced just under 30000000000. 00 of spending to fight the coronavirus the outbreak there is the largest outside china and more than 10000. 00 people have been britains finance minister has pledged more than 30000000000 dollars of measures to support the countrys economy from damage caused by the virus. In well an uptake in the number of cases recorded