A 3 week lockdown to slow the spread of the virus the country has the most cases of any nation in africa and there are fears of the poorest citizens could bear the brunt of the outright. Im sorry kelly welcome to the program the japanese government is banning arrivals from 21 European Countries and setting up a Coronavirus Task force as it warns that the epidemic could spread rapidly and widely 40 new cases have been confirmed bringing the countrys total to 1300 but there is concern that many in japan have been slow to get the message about curbing the spread of the virus. Enjoying the outdoors people in tokyo have been taking to the citys parks to soak up the spring weather and admired the seasonal Cherry Blossom crowds gather in public spaces despite appeals by the authorities to help contain the corona Virus Outbreak. So you remove as to why there are more people here than i expected so the world was afraid policeman might come and tell us to leave if its. Understood. Like you did things like being inside the house for a long time for his kid to be outside. A few months. On thursday came a stern warning from tokyo governor urging people to avoid nonessential outings. Q is that a crucial juncture it faces the risk of an explosive spread of the coronavirus. The call immediately prompted residents to queue up at supermarkets to stock up on food and supplies. You will continue to see the person who couldnt get anything or so shop to allow to come out again im glad i was able to buy things today. With packed crowds moving from talk us parks to cash registers warnings of a looming National Crisis have grown all the louder and the talk a little bit more about those warnings simon tenure is in tokyo he is the Washington Post bureau chief there thank you so much for joining us why does the message about social distancing appear to not be getting through to people there. One of the one thing is that the virus having taken off really in japan had been a slow but steady rise in infections but not the kind of excess aeration weve seen in comics or western europe and in the United States so people in a sense were lulled into a false sense of security they felt they got through the worst of it but the other point i think to make is that you know social distancing people can only put up with it for so long and we saw a bit of noise where the people just wanted to get the help they wanted to enjoy themselves and i think thats probably a lesson for every country around the world that you can tell people to stay at home you get a bit of good news and a bit of relief and they really want to get on with their lives again so its hard to keep people indoors indefinitely lets talk a little bit more about morales maintaining morales because there has also been this decision to postpone the 11 pics how has that affected the mood there and japan we know i think that in a way thats a bit of a relief there was this always this theory that the government was downplaying the epidemic it wasnt testing enough people because it was you know i didnt want to see the olympics this phone now that you know im not saying that thats right its a bit of a Conspiracy Theory but now weve got out of the way you know theres no question anymore of the government having to downplay it to pretend that its better than it is the olympics isnt going to happen and now the government can concentrate on getting this virus under control japan actually did get the 1st wave of the virus under 30 good control derives from china and now were seeing a 2nd wave in talking to all the medical experts there now really worried that we could see the kind of explosion explosive growth that weve seen in a lot of other countries and how about the Economic Situation because japans attempts at economic stimulus in the face of this crisis they seem much tamer than those adopted elsewhere in asia why is that. Well you know japan is kind of in constant economic stimulus mode it is talking about another economic stimulus now which could be a big one actually to try and get you know accounts of the effects of this certifying that most people are still being going to one of the commuter trains being less busy than usual but it is still pretty packed so we havent seen a complete disintegration of Economic Activity that weve seen again some other places because the look there hasnt been as severe but clearly this is having a big impact on the japanese economy is going to have a big impact the government is talking about economic stimulus and it will have to step up just as every other country around the world is having to step up to put together a stimulus package i mean expect got to come through he said simon then youre tokyo bureau chief at the Washington Post thank you so much pleasure. And here are some more of the latest developments in the corona virus pandemic 3 months into the outbreak and the global death toll from cova 19 related illnesses has now passed 22000 singapores government has reported 52 new cases bringing its tally of infections to 693. 00 it says just over half of the new infections were imported while the rest were locally transmitted and russia is halting all flights into and out of the country from friday moscows mayor has ordered the closure of all shops except Grocery Stores and pharmacies from sunday russia has also reported its 1st 2 deaths from the disease. Claims for Unemployment Benefits in the United States rocketed by more than 3000000 last week alone from just over a quarter of a 1000000 the week before thats by far the highest ever single jump in a week according to the department of labor the hardest hit sector with services reflecting the closure of businesses such as restaurants and bars a condom is expect the number of people who are claiming Unemployment Benefits to rise further while much of the United States remains on lockdown. And the u. S. Senate unanimously approved the biggest stimulus package in the countrys history to cushion the economic blow from the coronavirus pandemic the package is expected to be approved by the house of representatives on friday and it comes as the number of infections soars while the u. S. Is looking likely to become the pandemics new epicenter Many Health Care workers there say they do not have the supplies they need. A long line of drivers all waiting to be tested for the coronavirus this is florida but the cues are getting longer right across america. The number of confirmed infections is gathering pace along with the number of those known to have died from the virus as the scale of the outbreak becomes increasingly clear doctors are worried about their own safety and a part time weve cared to come to walk by being cared we are trained to the modern and were committed to doing mad doc to say hospitals nationwide are overwhelmed and theres not enough protective gear there are people that literally are wearing bandanas because they have Nothing Better to protect themselves from the respiratory droplets of patients who are and who would not and i think that the National Shame the u. S. President donald trump downplayed the dangers of a pandemic for weeks before changing his tone but he has criticized the shutdowns advocated by Infectious Disease experts to bring the outbreak under control for not going to let the cure every worse than the problem at the end of the 15 day period will make a decision as to which way we want to go where we want to go the timing and essentially were referring to the timing of the opening. Essentially the opening of our country this was a medical problem were not going to let it turn into a long lasting financial problem an increasing number of states have closed down nonessential businesses heating owners hard this restaurant is trying to keep going by serving takeaways but owner the mint owns 2 other eateries and pays 12000. 00 a month just in rent. Hes had to lay off most of his 25 stone off. This just taking it all us surprise and also off our feet we dont know how to deal with this every day is a new challenge for us is very challenging and for the most parts very terrible. We will get through this is the message from one bar owner in california people who have lost their jobs can get a free meal here. A small team does the cooking. Are you scared owner tom stop it is struggling to make sense of whats happening here in hollywood he has to pay rent of a 1000. 00 a day. Im concerned. All we can do is help each of them help each other and hope for help from washington. With over 700. 00 confirmed cases of the coronavirus south africa is the hardest hit african country in 21. 00 day lockdown begins at midnight only essential Service Workers will be allowed to leave their houses the president says that the lockdown is needed to keep the number of infected people from swelling into the hundreds of thousands through. The biggest danger lurks in poorer districts where most south africans live in densely populated quarters. For a lot see is one of them she has good reason to be fearful of the. No virus because she into jobs infected with hiv. Both take n. T. Retroviral but they could be especially vulnerable to the respiratory disease that accompanies coverage 19 about 50 percent of south africas hiv patients dont have access to any hiv drugs leaving them even more at risk experts warned that south africa could be a ticking time bomb in the coronavirus pandemic poor hygenic conditions are unavoidable in areas where many homes have no Running Water rows with explains that you cant afford protective gloves or Hand Sanitizer so the only option she has to keep her hands clean is to go to the public water pump and washing hands there. Used to lets try it losing a lockdown as a last resort with help from the army to enforce it the restrictions are severe starting friday almost no one will be allowed to go to work doctors and other vital professions are the only exceptions most stores will have to close drastic measures that will be economically painful to many. This taxi driver cant understand the governments decision he supports down his minibus seats with disinfectant ensues no danger to surpass injures even though they said very close together which could help spread the virus he says he wouldnt survive 3 weeks without working. And when h i v evil spreading there were lots of deaths to cure but no one imposed a lockdown. What may be an advantage to south africa in this pandemic is the countrys climate experts suspect the virus doesnt spread this easily in warm weather which may slow the spread. But thats called comfort. She says my hips and the straw for homes are already getting cooler in south africa winters on the way. Well meantime players in the bundesliga side well known berlin have agreed to waive their entire wages to help keep the club afloat during the stoppage caused by the coronavirus pandemic other bundesliga teams have agreed to accept a proportion of their wages but. Players are the 1st to forgo 100 per cent although its unclear how for the clubs management and other employees have agreed to take pay cuts when john berlin was promoted to the bundesliga for the 1st time last. Quick reminder of the top stories were following for you here on news the people of japan have to fire authorities warnings about the coronavirus by crowding into the parks to enjoy the Cherry Blossom season the government has now banned arrivals from 21 European Countries and set up a Coronavirus Task force. Claims for Unemployment Benefits in the United States rocketed by more than 3000000 last week alone from just over a quarter of a 1000000 the week before that is by far the highest ever jump in a single week according to the department of labor. And dont forget you can always get g. W. News on the go just download our app from Global Player from the app store which will give you access to all of the latest news from around the world as well as push notifications for breaking news if youre part of a news story you can also use the new app to send us photos and videos of things happening. Up next our coronavirus special with a look at the race to create vaccines and treatments for the virus all that more coming up in just a few minutes time with my colleague jim now to the lawn in the meantime from all of us here at g. W. Thank you so much for. Where does research stand. Background information. On. How the virus spread. Through the. Weekly. Show is called spectrum if you would like any information on the crown of virus or any other science topic you should really check out our podcast you can get your podcast you can also find us and. Science. On trees. A simple message yes a simple solution were not sure and certainly not all countries have been employing it the fight against corona virus has multiple fronts testing tracing infection chains racing to create vaccines and treatments or seeing what already exists and what could be adapted to treat the Novel Coronavirus how countries prioritize. Im gentle and those are the kinds of questions we want to answer in the t. W. Kovac 19 special its the same one scientists and government officials have a grappled with since the beginning of the outbreak now back to the message to test test and test south korea was one of the countries which followed the World Health Organizations advice most diligently and managed to flatten the curve heres how south korea did it. In a hospital has created a new system for testing patients suspected of suffering from the corona virus covert 19 after an initial consultation patients enter a booth to have samples taken and talked to a medical technician using an intercom. So young here on have developed a fever and other cold like symptoms and decided to get a test just to be safe. If you dont know that you have it pandemics parents even if youre a little anxious its good to have a test at 1st i was scared when i heard about it but it wasnt as painful as i thought and it was actually kind of interesting. To do the sort of the brainchild of dr kim saying gil really designs were quickly put in service on march 10th the booth helped medical workers process patients 10 times faster than the traditional procedure. Prior to the introduction of this system patients were treated in large negative pressure reams which take a long time to sterilize them ventilate its inefficient and doctors and nurses have to meet people face to face and were nervous about exposure and tie it this physical separation is safe and enables print examinations. Dozens of hospitals in south korea and abroad have expressed interest in implementing a booth testing system although these prototypes are not scaled for manufacturing dr kim has shared his know how. Testing has been a key pillar to south koreas response to the corona Virus Outbreak seeking to flatten the curve and reduce the number of new cases without implementing a complete lockdown test kits manufactured here have been exploited to other countries to strengthen their response to the pandemic. Drive through testing has also been an innovative way south korea has battled the corona Virus Outbreak despite fewer coronavirus cases in south korea in recent days medical intern part jan sue argues for rapid testing. The number of confirmed persons is gradually decreasing. The most important thing to get rid of the epidemic is to identify the suspect to patients as soon as possible and have them self isolate overseed necessary treatment so if you have even a little feet or suspected symptoms its recommended that you go to the hospital and get tested it conducted it with some time after examining thousands of patients drive through and booth testing have only uncovered a few cases of the coronavirus but they have offered a lot of reassurance to a nervous population. Joining me now is al edwards he is a professor and immunologist at the university of reading in the u. K. Now south koreas method seems to be working so why arent all affected countries doing mass testing if they can. Its a really good question i think that the video you just saw gives you some glimpses as to why testing itself is a very valuable tool but its quite labor intensive and it has to be done really carefully because if you do testing in a way that isnt properly and safely controlled there is a risk that you can also spread the virus or put your Health Workers at risk when they take those samples so its a delicate balance and it needs a lot of manpower well because of the complexity of this task we can imagine that not all countries are able to enroll this kind of mass testing what would you recommend for those countries so i think the most important thing is to spread the resource you have wisely so whats really important is to 1st of all prioritize people who are in hospital and also Health Care Workers because these are the most Vulnerable People and also the most exposed people and by prioritizing the use of your testing results and by using that smartly as possible even if you have limited testing results its still incredibly value and it gives you so much data and so much information about whats going on. What about home testing kits could they help at all yes theres a number of different technologies and tools out there. These can even be a simple i have one here of this little plastic that could potentially be used at home this kind of technology is going to be incredibly useful but it does have to be used very carefully so when you do a lab test you have the best possible accuracy if you do a home test theyre not quite as accurate but theyre more convenient so you have to make sure that you use the best possible science and medical practice to use these tests effectively rather than just using them without proper consideration. Now testing is of course one issue but how much of an issue is for example Global Access to vaccines and treatments going to be are we in danger of seeing a 1st come 1st serve the prochoice which could prioritize rich countries for example yeah and i think thats already happening to a degree with testing even the better off countries are getting 1st access to Testing Technology and unfortunately i could see the same thing happen with our opies theres some really good news and some positive news which is that people seem to be incredibly open to sharing the information they have about improved treatments and thats vital so everybody has that knowledge but whether we can see the same sharing of resources im not so sure about whether that resource in terms of ventilators or when vaccines start to be manufactured whether people will share them around im not sure whether thats going to happen well have to see. Information sharing as well as resource sharing its going to be vital thank you very much al edward he is a professor and immunologist at the university of reading in the u. K. Thanks for your insights now vaccines seem to interest many of you as youve been sending us your questions in the last few days our science correspondent Derek Williams has some answers for you take a look. Why will it take so long to come up with a vaccine the problem with developing any pharmaceutical product is that it has to go through an exhaustive Testing Process with the vaccine you 1st have to identify good potential candidates and that when astonishingly quickly this time within weeks of identifying the virus and sequencing its genome researchers begin talking about candidates but thats just the start you next have to test your candidate for safety usually you do it 1st in animals and then in increasingly large groups of humans but only after a candidate has proven Safety Developers usually begin looking at actually how effective it is so even if and when youre a candidate fulfills all of those criteria you still have to ramp up production to manufacture hundreds of millions or even billions of doses now there are ways to speed the entire process up a little bit for example by by running some of those trials in parallel rather than one after the other but that approach has drawbacks to and thats why most experts usually predict that we wont have a vaccine ready to distribute on a wide scale for at least a year and a half. Why do people talk so much about a vaccine is a medication more important. Medications are of course important for limiting the impact of the virus on patients around the world but long term to defeat the disease we need whats called herd immunity and the best way to get that is through vaccines if we dont develop vaccines experts currently estimate that between 50 and 70 percent of us would have to get coated 19 before herd immunity kicked in and stop the pandemic naturally but along the way it could potentially kill millions of people so a vaccine offers a safe alternative to achieving immunity in a large percentage of the population and thousands of prevention is really. Worth a pound of cure thats why although treatments are very important long term that seems our even more so is that research on how existing drugs affect 19. A range of potential drugs that might one day help treat kovac 19 are being trialled around the world but we dont really have many results for any of them so far the World Health Organization is looking at 3 candidates in particular that have shown some promise 1st its examining the effects of a stablished antimalarial drug song coronavirus symptoms that each oh sponsor trials are also ongoing for combinations of antivirals that have already been approved for treating a hiv and finally one of the most promising substances is a compound called rendez if here it was originally developed as a potential treatment for ebola but it didnt work out for that disease as well as hoped retrospective testing however showed that it did affect replication in the summers by wrists so hopes are high that it might also affect that pathogens close relative the new coronavirus the best thing about all of these candidates is that most or all of the development has already been done for them so production could be ramped up quickly if they did prove effective and these Clinical Trials we should know soon if any of them work. And before we let you go we step away from the sobering world of tests and vaccines to indulge in lighter fare one restaurant in hanoi has created the Corona Burger so far only available in vietnam but it looks set to take off the world wide its a beef burger in a green tea stand by her shaped body the Restaurant Owner is there lighted with his creation he says business is good and no hopefully remind customers to wash their hands before eating. And there are swiss confectioners reminding us of the season but also of the times but Chocolate Easter bunnies a decorated with little face masks. And that was our d. W. Call that 19 special for more do check out our social Media Channels im joined now the thank you for what. Is a master of the art of confrontation this is a great pleasure in a verbal come back doesnt mean youre going to see. The undisputed champion of top political talk to join the frightened people you know so far everybody understands it except you enter the conflict zone and join to sebastian as he holds the power to account this is a picture for you whichever way you like to spin the conflict zone. Every day counts for us and for our planet. Moving ideas is on its way to bring you more conservation. How do we see the screen how can we protect habitats what to do with all our waste. We can make a difference by choosing Smart Solutions overstrained. Set in our ways. Google Ideas Limited series including 3000. 00 on w. And online. Whats the secret behind this classic. Music for sound. As soon as you hear beethoven lose your mind. On the story behind the music. For the teachers registering. Ha ha. Ha. Beethovens 9th for the more Stores Opening moves on t. W. Take to. Their rift something that is not working some people decide not to see it when a lot of the palin luncheon friends work all the time countries infidels i have whole thing about bad i dont have it why dont you put the on the sun. Frances president emanuel macro likes to be seen as one of the driving forces for reform in the e. U. But his efforts to change his own country around as a serious trouble i guess this week here in brussels