More headlines at the top of the hour. Now on bbc news, as countries around the globe consider how sport comes out of lockdown, bbc sport examines how it will emerge from the pandemic and what lessons have been learned. Sport is about escaping. Getting away from reality, even just for a few seconds. 2020 offered a years worth of glories, distraction. The boisterous thrill of the six nations. Liverpool striving towards the premier league title. The summer love of wimbledon. The continent wide party of the euros, and of course, the greatest show on earth, tokyo 2020. But for all it promised, 2020 was the year reality caught sport. This year, there would be no escape. The virus that emerged in wuhan, china, around the start of the year, turning local stadiums into field hospitals, soon rippled out. Sport was in its path. The olympic basketball qualifiers were due to take place in china this week but have been moved due to the coronavirus. The test event in china has had to be cancelled due to the coronavirus. The chinese grand prix has been postponed because of the coronavirus outbreak. Meanwhile, half an hours drive from the olympic venues in tokyo, a cruise trip, the diamond princess, sat in quarantine, due to an outbreak of coronavirus on board. 0minous warnings to organisers and to the world that this virus would not be contained. It was silently crossing the planet. By february, it was spreading in northern italy, where the prosperous city of bergamo sits, but no one knew. 0n the 19th, bergamos Football Team were in milan for a Big Champions League match against valencia from spain. A crowd of 4a,000, most of them from bergamo, were there, unaware of the threat in their midst. Journalist conor clancy, who was reporting on what he thought would be remembered as an historic 4 1 atalanta victory. With every goal, the celebrations only amplified and i remember looking around in disbelief after the third goaljust because i could barely believe what i was seeing and there were people in the stands just climbing all over each other, kissing, hugging, embracing, because we did not realise what was about to hit us. The atmosphere from start to finish was phenomenal. There was no regard for social distancing. It was not even a concept at the time. Ever since, it is almost terrifying when you look back knowing what we know now. You can really see why this game has been described by giorgio gori, the mayor of bergamo, as a biological bomb, because it is one third of the citys population. I think it is hard to look back at this game now and think anything other than yes, this contributed massively to the spread. No one knows exactly how Coronavirus Spread in bergamo, but we do know its impact. In march, four and a half thousand people in the area died. It is the worst hit city in italy. The images of coffins carried in military convoy haunted the world. The club dedicated the second leg in spain to the people of bergamo, but none of them witnessed it. The game was played behind closed doors to try and halt the spread of the virus. By that point, sport at all levels taking place in italy was banned. At the same time in the uk, the advice, informed, the government said, by science, was very different. At this stage, we are not in the territory of a cancelling or postponing events and i do not expect that to be the case after today. I was at twickenham with the Prime Minister yesterday. There was a huge crowd of people there. There is no reason why people should not be going to those sorts of events. I think it is very premature to be talking about that sort of thing. So cheltenham should be unaffected . The Cheltenham Festival this week . Yes, certainly the Cheltenham Festival should be going ahead. So, the way was clear for a quarter a Million People to visit the festival over four days. The jockey club fulfilled government guidelines of the time by asking those who felt unwell to stay away and installing Hand Sanitisers. We had no concerns personally but im very pleased they are taking extra precautions with the hand washing etc. Did you think twice about coming here . No, definitely not. We thought it might get called off at one point but happy it is going ahead. I think there is a difference between obviously here and the extent in china and italy, so obviously, like my mum said, if it does get worse, then we would have understood, but i think at the moment it is ok. No worries. But some did worry. Journalist melanie finn was covering the festival for the irish independent. I was standing inside the race track and there is a hill when you come in and just watching thousands and thousands of people pouring in, close confines, hugging each other, greeting each other, and ijust thought this is a disaster waiting to happen. And it was like they were in a bubble, like a cocoon, like a cheltenham cocoon, and all they cared about was the racing and the drinking and the gambling and just having a good time, having a big party. So, i contacted my news desk and i told them that i did not think people were acting prudently and i felt like it was a disaster waiting to happen and they got me the next flight out from birmingham the following morning, which was thursday. Melanie got a cough and chest pains a week after she got back from cheltenham but was not tested for covid i9. She took a fortnight off work but recovered. It is very hard to know where someone gets it. Whether it is before cheltenham, whether it was on the way travelling to the event or whether at some stage afterwards. You can definitely say the wisdom of letting it go ahead was crazy. Definitely, it was not prudent to allow it to happen, because you are significantly increasing the risk of a large volume of people getting sick and then subsequently, going back to their towns, their villages, their cities. 0n the wednesday of cheltenham week, fans gathered in liverpool for a Big Champions League match. Among them, around 3000 Atletico Madrid supporters who had left behind a city already badly hit by coronavirus. As usual, an atmosphere at european nights drew in reds fans from far away. If someone told us that we could not go, we would have respected that. I think that is important, but we just assumed that the right people had made a thorough decision about it. We are here to support the reds. What its all about. If everybody acts sensibly, i think people are panicking anyway, so there is no need. Common sense. But a Group RepresentingLiverpool Supporters was uneasy about the evening. We had actually raised concerns with the club prior to the bournemouth game which was the weekend before because we had fans raising concerns with us about the possible outbreak, so at that time the club were putting stuff out about making sure there were Hand Sanitisers etc within the toilets and taking what was at that point the government advice. So i think over what was probably five or six days we had quite a number of contacts with the club. I think we have to think about this as the impact on the city itself because 3000 madrid fans and obviously the vast majority flew in, so the vast majority came through the airport, went to the city centre, went to the bars and restaurants, cafes. They did have massive contact with maybe not all the 5a,000 liverpool fans but certainly with a significant number of the general public and including taxi drivers and the like. There has been a spike in liverpool. There are similar spikes in birmingham, cardiff, because significant events took place. That can only be then that there had not been a National Leadership to do this and i think that is the issue, that this government should have been taking leadership. There are actions that could have been taken and should have been. With speculation over a link between the match and a rise in coronavirus cases in liverpool was put to the deputy chief scientific adviser. I think the question you raised really has to be put into the context of what was the general policy at the time. If we were at a bit of our recent history we were living our lives as normal, in that circumstance, going to a football match is not a particularly large risk. However, once you get to a situation of our strange lives as we live there now, we spend all our time basically at home, of course you would not add on an extra risk of lots and lots of people all going off to the same place at the same time. I think it will be very interesting to see in the future, when all the science is done, what relationship there is between the viruses that have circulated in liverpool and the viruses that have circulated in spain. That is certainly an interesting hypothesis you raise there. So, is there anything in the idea that big sporting events helped to spread coronavirus . Edge health is a company that provides analytics to the independently research the impact of three sporting events, the Cheltenham Festival, liverpool versus Atletico Madrid and the Manchester Derby from a few days earlier. They looked at the nearest nhs trusts to the event and compared the numbers of coronavirus attributed deaths to similar trusts in the same region. They then adjusted for the number of beds. They found that between 20 to 30 days after the event, as the trust near cheltenham and liverpools ground, there were more than three extra deaths per day and just under three extra deaths a day in manchester. It is always difficult to isolate the specific driver or the specific moment the virus was spread, but given that there are these three big events all around the same time, and given that the hospitals do see a relatively high increase in mortality, there are some fairly strong evidence, combined with just knowing that there are that many people in that space where the disease would have been able to spread more easily. There is no conclusive proof of a link between these events and coronavirus cases, yet. And hindsight is particularly potent in a pandemic. But one expert says she wanted action earlier. I was calling for a ban on Mass Gatherings quite early in march, just because we know that these types of events where you have lots of people together in a small amount of space, especially if you have people travelling from different places, it can mean that the virus spreads quite quickly in an outbreak that we want not to happen, what we call super spreading events, where there is one event and out of that many people become infected. I think with outbreaks, what we know and this is what they do who has been saying, is that the faster you can respond and handle the virus, especially when that is so infectious so infectious like coronavirus which is transmitted so easily, the easier it is later on to actually develop policies to be able to manage it. Liverpool city council launching an investigation into the impact of the liverpool versus Atletico Madrid match on the spread of coronavirus in the area. For their part, Liverpool Football Club have indicated that they were following government policy on a sporting event at the time. Hand sanitisers were available. Meanwhile, a spokesman for cheltenham racecourse at the time. Meanwhile, a spokesman for cheltenham racecourse said. The department for digital culture, media and sport, confirmed these events followed government guidance. Whatever the discussions about delaying the final whistle, events now moved faster than anyone imagined. Over a few mid march days, everything changed. Suddenly, for sport, the virus became visible. Tonights premier league game between Manchester City and arsenal has been called off. This is all stemming back from a game that arsenal played two weeks ago against olympiakos. Olympiakos owner, evangelos marinakis, subsequently tested positive for coronavirus. Arsenal have just confirmed that head coach, mikelarteta, hasjust tested positive for covid i9. Tonight, chelsea revealed their First Team Squad is self isolating because their winger, Callum Hudson 0doi tested positive for the virus. You may be aware, i had the virus for the last couple of days, which i have recovered from. All english and scottish football matches are suspended because of the impact of coronavirus. The masters is off, as is englands cricket tour. A major move from formula 1 today. The season is set to be suspended. The latest thing to go the london marathon. The final round of six nations fixtures, a complete write off. What you have seen over the last 48 hours or so, in effect, is the collapse of the global sporting calendar. With all sporting seasons now on hold, the summer spectaculars that stood beyond them would inevitably fold. Uefa announced the mens european football championship, due to be hosted all over the continent, would be pushed back one year. We knew we had to stop the competitions. We think that postponing the euro is the only chance to get a chance for the National Leagues and all the Club Competitions to finish their competitions. The womens event, due to be held in england in 2021, held in england in 2021, was also moved back to avoid a clash. All eyes were now on tokyo. The party promised to the world at the end of the last 0lympics was looking increasingly implausible. Billions had been spent, shiny facilities stood waiting, but the pressure was growing. Athletes and governing bodies openly expressed major doubts about health and training. No modern Olympic Games had ever been postponed or cancelled for anything other than a world war, but the tide was coming in for tokyo. In order to safeguard the health of the athletes and everybody involved in the Olympic Games, we have to postpone the olympic and Paralympic Games at tokyo 2020 to the year 2021. I feel relieved because we were getting more and more feedback from athletes and sports saying it has to be postponed this year. The one decision we have to make as soon possible is that we postpone it in 2020 and put it back 2021. So my sense is relief. Ijust do not think it is sensible to continue, given the current circumstances the world is in. First of all, athletes cannot train as normal. I know that home workouts have become quite fashionable amongst the public, but it is no way to prepare for an Olympic Games. It is all consuming, and olympic campaign, so it really is a big deal to add another year to it and then you have the question of, will my body even hold up . This is my third Olympic Games. I have had a few injuries, nothing too major, but there are all these thoughts going round in your head, but i think to have a date set for next summer, to have the selection confirmed, i think it all brings back the reality of how amazing and an Incredible Opportunity it is. I have been training for four years for this, for the qualification event and the olympics and it is all this preparation, it is quite frustrating. It is quite frustrating. Because right now i am ready to go, you know, i am in war mode. The paralympics was also moved back a year. Some disability athletes have been anxiously trying to balance their sport and their health, even before the National Lockdown was announced. So, i had a phone call from our doctor who basically informed us that we should isolate as much as possible, that we are ok to go and ride again as long as we do not get in contact with too many people and to follow the government guidelines in keep washing our hands and be as safe as possible, but obviously i am at high risk so i havejust had to basically go and do the necessities with the horse and then come back home again. The final remains of the sporting schedule were swept away. The Tour De France was postponed. Wimbledon cancelled for the First Time Since the second world war. Sportsmen and women whose strange lives are so conditioned by routine, confined indoors, like the rest of us, no escape. Find new goals. Work with new training partners. Make the best of things. Im reallyjust inspired by this whole situation. Im training very hard. Even still, im just seeing the positives in this and kind of using the olympics next year is almost like a beacon. We can do all of our body weight exercises outside of the gym, in our home here, but it is hard to replicate some of those moves we do because we do not have the vaults or beam or bars. I have a floor bar so i can do some bar work against the wall and stuff like that, but nothing really compares to swinging and getting that feel and that motion. For some, a chance to think beyond competition, to play a part in the wider battle. I think weve got to get through this period without thinking about sport. I think this is a very good time to focus your energy on something else, or other people and yeah, i think that is just the best option to take for me. That i cant be paranoid or anxious about the performance and how much this will affect my performance. But for those running sport, staring out windows at empty stadiums, thoughts were on survival. In rugby league, a sport so rooted in its community, everything was at stake. A last resort, a £16 million loan from the government. It is no exaggeration to say that without this, and it forms the platform for the survival of our sport, that the sport was in real and genuine danger of going out of existence. The winter covers had never come off the cricket. This summer brought the promise of revolution in the form of the controversial new hundred competition. For both men and women. Now cancelled, the england and Wales Cricket board plugged the gap for now, but a potential loss of £380 million this year may be a very difficult total to chase as the man at the top told a group of mps. I do not want to hide away from the fact that our ability to protect the Cricket Network is going to be significantly hampered by what happens this year and it is a real concern, right down to participation. In british football, the taps had been turned off with the season in full flow. At lower levels, cash dried up fast. I own my own Football Club. I have this awful situation whereby we have no revenue whatsoever coming into the Football Club. The only thing we have had is we have had a loan on next seasons income, the solidarity payment, the tv money we would rely on, and next season looks extremely grim. As does the short term, i must say, not just for my Football Club but every Football Club in the lower league. I have got two young kids at home, a wife, we have a mortgage, cars to pay for, the bills that Everybody Needs to pay, so, when you have any kind of financial concerns, which has been brought on heavily by this coronavirus, it brings them to the forefront. Arriving left footed and finishes for womens sports, the rapid gains of recent years were vulnerable, with professionalism still new, the International FootballPlayers Union warned in a report about an almost existential threat to the womens game from the pandemic. I think definitely in womens football, people have been going through the last couple of years, this is a really hard situation. A lot of uefa, fifa, they are missing out on a lot of money and i think, if clubs need to cut anything, it is probable going to be womens football, which is obviously for me not the right decision to make as a club but i definitely think womens football might struggle after this. The financial skyscrapers of the mens English Premier League sit a long way above the breadline. But here, as in scotland and the english football league, there were unfinished sporting matches. Relegation battles and resolved. Promotions are pending. Title parties paused. Deals unfulfilled. Pressure growing everywhere, but in these times, sports sits somewhere beneath science. The images of players training on their own, a stark reminder of how far things were from normal and how many hurdles remained on the road back to the match. I think the challenge of this virus is we still do not have a good handle on it. You do not want people to become widely affected, we have to have strict controls over these events and i think Something Like the Tour De France, where you have thousands of people coming in from around the country, they travel around the country, that is just a recipe for disaster. With the virus that spreads so easily. So, i think the decisions has to be taken event to event at the exact. Risk of the event spreading the virus further compared to the benefit, but i think were going to see a difference between behind closed doors at sporting events and sporting events where we have large groups of spectators, so we have some kind of a scientific breakthrough, large gatherings are going to be the last thing that we see opening up again and allowing to happen. With the stadium doors are closed for the foreseeable future, there we re for the foreseeable future, there were now are two ways out. Scottish football took one, curtailing the season football took one, curtailing the season and awarding celtic clear at the top of the table, the title. German football took the other. The country had suffered less than the uk from the pandemic and by midway to net it may, the bundesliga was back. With the stadiums empty. There wasnt support from the top. |j back. With the stadiums empty. There wasnt support from the top. I think it lifts the spirits of the nation and people would like to see not just people back at work and school but enjoy some of the past time sports in particular put up the culture secretary has also been working on a plan to get sports played behind closed doors when we moved to the second phase and that is something we are looking at. What the foreign secretary was describing as something known as project restart, an effort between the governments chief medics and he sports to try and find a safe way to play. For premier league footballers, that made big changes. Initially, training in small groups, twice weekly testing and daily temperature checks with a view to restarting action in the coming weeks. But some players stayed away. The professional Footballers Association said it had been contacted association said it had been co nta cted by association said it had been contacted by players with concern, particularly those from a black, asian minority ethnic background. This player plays for crystal palace. Unfortunately, we have had to some stats come out that seems that more people from the black, asian minority ethnic communities have suffered more from the virus which puts more worry, so i have to be honest, i do not think i can watch the game comfortably any more if we do go back any time soon. As a medical person, my view on it is, if you are looking for a completely risk free environment for football to return it, it will not return in the near future. If you are looking for a sport to return with minimal risk, then i cannot think of a sport thatis risk, then i cannot think of a sport that is doing more to reduce the risk involved for them to be able to return to the sport. Most players did return and in the first round of tests, only six out of 748 came back positive. At this stage, very manageable. But problems that might come further down the track. Do you then say that nothing can take place u nless then say that nothing can take place unless everybody involved has a negative test . What would that mean if for example one team tests positive and you have all the other teams starting to play their matches but the other teams cannot . Because in theory, then if someone does test positive and they have been in a changing room with their team mates, then you are back into this quarantine and isolation scenario and the whole thing falls down again. Perhaps, weighing up the risks of sports new normal. If it does take place, it takes place with masks. It is tied to what goes on in laboratories. Without a scientific advance against coronavirus, even the rearranged tokyo 0lympics might not be possible. Like so much of society, sport is reliant on science, but of the world finds a way out, maybe 2021s great sporting escape is on. Good afternoon, it is another sunny weekend out there to close out the month of may. We still have this area of High Pressure across scandinavia, which is influencing the weather story right across western europe. A good deal of dry weather and warm weather. The yellow and orange tones denoting temperatures are slightly above the average for the time of year. Yes, wherever you are oi average for the time of year. Yes, wherever you are or whatever you are doing, ican wherever you are or whatever you are doing, i can guarantee you will see scenes like this. From cornel all the way to the north east of scotland, there is blue sky and sunshine for stop a bit of a difference with the feel of the weather, particularly on the east. You can see from the satellite picture, hardly a cloud in the sky. There is aberdeenshire, right into cornwall where we saw those weather watchers. Just a little bit of fair weather cloud in the north west, but really it is a settled story. We keep that quiet theme through the evening, that easterly breeze just driving on little more cloud across eastern and north east england but it will allow the temperatures to fall back to comfortable images for sleeping. We start tomorrow morning with any murkiness quickly leaving and we are back to doing it all again, lots of blue sky and sunshine for top temperatures again are quite promising for that easterly breeze, keeping it at perhaps more of a co mforta ble keeping it at perhaps more of a comfortable level, 17 to 19 degrees. Not as woman west of scotland as a few days ago, bitterly warmest and best of the weather is likely to be through the midlands. Not as warm in the west of scotland. Tomorrow is the final day of may of what is now going to be the sunniest spring on record. So, beginning ofjune, beginning of meteorological summer. Could be a bit of a change as well as this weather front will introduce the potential for some it as this weather front will introduce the potentialfor some it showered through the middle part of the week and something a little bit colourful so we and something a little bit colourful so we could pick up some showers coming from the no continent as well. The yellow and orange tones pushing back into the near continent asa pushing back into the near continent as a northerly wind starts to pick up as a northerly wind starts to pick up and drag the cooler air across the country. All of that basically tra nslates the country. All of that basically translates into the beginning of the week will be warm, settled and sunny and somewhat cooler with the rest of the welcome showers by the end of the welcome showers by the end of the week. This is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. Appeals for calm after a fourth night of violence in the us city of minneapolis following the death of george floyd, a black american, in police custody. A former Police Officer is charged with murder and the pentagon puts the us military on high alert. Anger has spread across america. A state of emergency is declared in georgia. Atlantas mayor calls for an end to rioting. You are disgracing our city. You are disgracing the life of george floyd