Death tolls from the virus. The death toll from the pandemic reaches record heights in spain. The e health m ministry in madrd says t the outbreak town has coe to over 8000. There is a spectrum of light at the end of the tunnel for italians. A rerecord number r of recoveri. But the battle against the coronavirus isnt over yet. The government extending its emergency measures to cover the easter holiday. Hello and welcome back to the france 24 newsroom. The coronavirus pandemic remains are our top story. Show that theures outbreak has infected over 7000 77,000 people worldwide thehe global death toll standing at more than 37,500. A day after france recorded its worst single data will, president Emmanuel Macron single day death toll, president and man u mccrone is visiting a factory which churns out muchneeded protective masks. The site is now operating 24 ithrs a day to up output medical personnel and d retiremt homes sayaying thatat 40 Million Masks are n needed each week and that does not include those working in supermarkets or other industries that are still operating. This, as a nation enters its third week of lockdown. A little earlier here, i spoke to our chief Foreign Editor and i put it to him that this is a factory visit by a president who is very much under pressure amid this health emergency. L like all leleaders around e struggliningybodydy is to d deal withth the csequenencf thisis outbreak. In that respect, frarance isoo different. Emmanuel macron is trying to showow that his governmnment ine himself is on top of the problem, and there are many, many problems associated with it. The production, for instance, of masks which is associated with the visit to this factory, is critical because the country has an enonormous shortage at the moment. It could need at least 40 Million Masks and is producing around about a million. One billion masks, the first batch arrived in france on monday, more to come on wednesday. But there is immediate need to get masks to the hospitals, to the nursing homes, to the police who have to deal with the public, to general practitionerers, threeee of whom have died over the last couple of weeks. This is an urgent p problem, its really important for the government to show that it has got a grip on the thing. There is a lot of political pressure coming from outside party,nt macrons own demanding that he do more, that he forced factories to start producing tests, antiseptic gel, as well as masks. This is just part of that response to show that the government is, indeed, on top of things. Thomas seen with france, one airports midnight, were closed until further notice with the virus increasingly affecting global travel. This transport hub saw just 20 claims, take off or land compared to 600 on the average day. A bizarre site for anyone who has ever flown into pariss second airport, this domestic of use to welcome over 30 million passengers per year, now reduced to a trickle. Because one of virus pandemic has driven countries to close their borders and ground air travel to a halt which reduced the second Busiest Airport which has been forced to suspend commercial operations. During this period, emergency medical aid, or medical evacuation sites. Thomas all these flights have been drastically reduced in recent weeks. Handlingrt is used to over 90,000 passengers per day spread over 600 flights. On mondaday, those numbebers are down to just 4000 people over 20 flights. Four a airlinene still operating will now diver t to the paris mn hub. Among them, air france. Like many others, the corona virus pandemic has left the National Carrier in a precarious position. They have estimated that t the Global Airline industry will need over 200 billion of support to survive. For its part, the french government has not ruled out nationalization of air france klm. Staying with europe, the Health Ministry in madrid has revised the number of new cases which now stands at almost 94,500 with the death toll also 89. Nting to a total of 810 this makes the new fatality r re a record for spain. I spoke to her madrid correspondent and this is what she had to say. There will be a Cabinet Meeting today, we are expecting the primee minister to look at extra measures to help lots of selfemployed people who complained t that they were not eligiblele for any kinind of r f and they w were beingold to closose their businesses. There will be something announced for them, perhaps they wont have to pay all of their Social Security payments under the new measures today. Also, measures for people who are renting. Lots of people who are in very dire economic circumstances because of this, they cant leave their homes, they cant go about their jobs. We are seeing an increasing number of temporary layoffs for some businesses, particularly the smaller ones. Thomas the worlds hardest and country remains italy, where the Health Minister has extended containment measures until at least easter. More than 11,500 people e have died s since the virus first ben back on february 21. On monday, the Civil Protection agency announced that a further 812 people have died in the previous 24 hours. But it is not all dodoom and g m the state also seeing its daily rates of new infections fall and with the recovery rate now hittining a new high. At this Emergency Call Center in italys piedmont region, workers field calls on people worried theyve been infected by covid19. The worry on the other end of the line is justified. Italys death toll from the virus remains the highest in the world, accounting for one third of all fatalities across the globe. Casesith 4000 new reportrted o on mondnday, the dy number of cases is decreasing and almost 1600 people have recovered in the last 24 hours. This is a record. [speaking foreign language] despite that positive sounding news, epidemiologist say the real number of italys cases could be as much as five to 10 times larger because only people with severe symptoms are being tested. Among the dead, 61 doctors who died during the pandemic including 22 in just the past week. Overflowing, hotels are making room for patients who need to remain in quarantine. Ththe whole country has been ona nationwide lockdown for three weeks and it should continue for at least two more weeks, but some in the government are suggesting a lockdown should last may. Thomomas next, the japanese pre minister has been pushing the World Health Organization to put its foot harder on the pedal when it comes to developing vavaccines to combat this pandemic. For more on the solutions and the latest scientific developments, we can head to reading and the tip annexed for in biochemical engineering. Thank you very much for being with us here on france 24. Dr. Edwards, the big question that many of our viewers are surely asking this hour is when will we see a tried and tested vaccine rolled out globally . Thing isa positive that the Global Community has discussed for many years how to accelerate the process of development, and were seeing that with very rapid evaluations in clinical trials, many teens developing different types of vaccines. I think we can be confident that a vaccine will be developed. However, there are some problems ahead, so personable, we need to check that those vaccines are as safe as possible before they are widely used. Secondly, there are limitations to the number of dosages we can actually manufacture, so that is something we need to urgently think about, whether we can start to develop the manufacturing capacity that we need as well as testing the vaccines that they work. This tuesday, is there one country or one team of scientists flying the flag more than others when it comes to Vaccine Development . What i think is positive is we are getting lots of communication between scientists across the globe to make sure that understanding is shared. I i dont think theres any obvious leaders. In fact, i would hope that quite a few of the different vaccines and development were actually all working, more than one of them should work, and we are all hoping that each others experimental vaccines work quickly. Ofhink theres a lot cooperation, and no obvious front runners at the moment. Were going to interrupt you there very briefly to head back to the french city where the president is now about to speak to the nation, lets take a listen. I want to tell you how proud be at this factory next to the folks who work here. We are currently fighting against his pandemic alongside Health Care Workers. My thoughts go out to them. Obviously, we have to protect and equip these health care with this challenge that we know all too well by now. The minister of health and several ministers have been talking about our capacity to provide these Health Care Workers with the right kind of equipment. First and foremost, masks, surgical masks. Masks that will protect our Health Care Workers. We are well aware of our difficulties in providing enough of these commodities. We have gone up to 4 million per week, 40 million per week for our Health Care Workers, approximately. This has created a lot of tension on the existing stocks of the masks. At the beginning of this crisis, we only had 140 Million Masks available. We have the following options. We can massively import these masks that are put together in china. There was never any question before this crisis that we masks,stock up aliens of but everything has changed now. This trigger profound changes, the government has come up with a trend in order to never miss masks, to always have the right amount of masks. Week, we are providing more of these masks for our Health Care Workers. In order to face the current challenge and the lack of this equipment, we have taken several decisions. We will indeed be importing billionore than one coming from china. Of thiso take advantage to express gratitude to those local officials throughout the country that have given up their stocks of masks for Health Care Workers s in their cities. One requirement is very clear, we need to produce a lot more masks here in france on our national territories. This is a strategic necessity at this point. We need to have european sovereignty over this capacity to produce these masks. We can no longer be dependent on foreign powers for this. We have four is your quote producers four historical producers, the factory here in this part of france, the produces aboutat three quarters of all that france has. Extraordinary efforts have been made in conjunction with the government, local factories, partners in order to drastically increase our production by 50 . This factory has been working , theordering new machines production here alone has doubled over the past week. Yet. E will go further before the crisis, we were producing 3. 3 Million Masks per week. April, by the end of april, we will be producing 10 Million Masks. We will have triple that capacity over the course of several weeks. We will pursue this effort in order to increase our capacity to produce masks. Develop our complete alongside with several different Industrial Partners in france who will contribute in this effort and help reduce more masks. Capacity tohave the produce about 15 Million Masks per week. Questsegically important , what renders this possible is the fact that we have maintained our capacity, our engineering fingers, our thinkers, engineers, and we are withinan effort to buy the European Union in order to contribute to this effort. Alongside the effort to help out , we alsoh care workers need to equip other people were on the front lines against this epidemic. Not just Health Care Workers, but police officers, the folks. Ho work in stores, for the time being, they are strictly reserved for Health Care Workers. When we increase our capacity to produce, we will try our best to provide other sectors, other essential workers with these masks. 85 to give you an update, of prototypes have been approved very recently. Buy a month from now, within the next few weeks, we will be doubled to produce up to one Million Masks. Again, this is absolutely necessary. , out are an essential part of government has been fully transparent since they won on this issue. We also have another critical issue that we need to deal with, ventilators. We need those. Icus who are highly mobilized and based with massive arrivals of those in need of artificial ventilation desperately need this equipment. On this front as well, we are importing quantities of ventilators, respirators. Companyin france a which is highly mobilized on this. Company has been mobilized and very much involved in increasing its capacity to produce this essential piece of machinery. Other industries have associated themselves with this, this consortium will help build up to 10,000 respirators by the end of may. Risk heavy respirators, heavy machinery. This consortium will increase the capacity to produce with the objective of providing 10,000 respirators are the end of may. By the end of may. We also need products. Nd sanitizing gel we have increased tenfold our capacity to produce a Hand Sanitizer gel. Thousands, tens of thousands of liters per day at this point. I want to thank all those who have contributed. Drugstores, pharmacists have mobilized in an exceptional manner to increase our capacity to produce this essential product. Drugs, medicines we need a lot of medical equipment. All of this is putting extraordinary pressure on the world market in this particular sector on these drugs. Our strategy is very simple. We are massively ordering every product that can be produced in france while increasing that capacity to produce as well as within the European Union in order to secure these imports. In order to finance this effort, the french government has dedicated a budget of 4 million euro which will finance these orders of artificial respirator machines and masks. As you have understood, in order to fight, in order to lead this fight against the pandemic in the following context where uncertainty reigns and there is great tension on world markets, our priority is to build in france, to build more in france, build more within europes borders. Everywhere we have the capacity to produce in france, we will increase our productivity, we will hire more personnel. We will also innovate. I want to also thank our Business Leaders in france, workers. And our big businesses, our small businesses, who are also on the front lines, who are also helping in this effort, who are also right behind our Health Care Workers, the men and women who are helping france, the French Economy to continue functioning. I want to thank them again. They are showing great bravery and showing up at the workplace. Their families are in anguish, their children wait at home and require a lot of organization. These people nonetheless continued to come to work and that is something that i salute. Nothing will be the same once this crisis has gone by, we will haveve to rebuild our national sovereignty, our european sovereignty. We had started to do so before the crisis, you heard me talk about this. Reforms, we were competitive, but we also needed the will to produce more in france, and become more independent. We have started doing so with a lot of courage in the midst of this crisis, and we will continue doing so after this crisis. Sovereignty and solidarity. None of this would be possible without these men and women who were not counting the hours, who with a lot of bravery are here to help push the country forward. I thank you deeply and i thank you all. It is this united france in which i believe, the united france that everywhere in france is showing resolve and which will allow us to win against this invisible enemy. This enemy is, in fact, invisible. Thank you very much. Thank you all. Youve been listening to the french president speaking at a massproducing factory and a western city, the french leader says it is crucial to have the necessary number of such protective masks for Health Care Workers each week. Hes announced more than one billion will be imported from china, but he also says many more need to be produced on the home soil and here in europe. 15 million should be made on french soil by the end of april. We can head back to our chief Foreign EditorRobert Parsons rob, what are the main takeaways from the speech, sovereignty and solidarity seem to be the watchwords. Solidarity,ty and more of everything that is assired to maintain efficiently as possible the french service. Obviously he focused most of his speech on masks because he is at the biggest mask factory which of the total. But he himself pointed out that before this crisis started, france was producing just over 3 Million Masks per w week and the requirement is for far, far more than that. France is going to be producing 50 million per week by the end of april, as he pointed out in your introduction. According to many people in france, the people who represent the doctors and the nursing staff, france needs 40 Million Masks immediately, now. To address that, president macron says francees impoining masks as w wel theyre putting in an order forr one billllion from china, 8 million of which arrived on monday, 12 million more coming on wednesday. But the accent o of his speech s on sovereignty, as you pointed out yourself. France has to make sure that it is able to deal with crises using its own production. The accent will be on making sure that france is capable of producing them, capable of producing ventilators, capable of producing the gel and anything else needed to face the crisis like this in the teacher. Thomas thank you very much for that update. That bringngs you upuptodate e again. Do stay with us, more news still to come. [birds chirping] narrator for 33 years, this city has been abandoned. Everything was left behind toys, shoes, books. Even the