UK may be included in US travel ban as WHO calls Europe 'centre of pandemic' – as it happened
This blog is now closed.
1.44am GMT
We are closing this blog now and launching a new one here. On Saturday Australia's chief medical officer Professor Brendan Murphy said school closures are not yet warranted, though mass gatherings of more than 500 people will be banned in Australia from Monday. He said not everyone should rush out and get tested if they had symptoms.
Murphy said that in Australia, "Community transmission is so low at the moment that we are focusing our testing on returned travellers or contacts of people who are sympathetic. We don't want people with an ordinary mild cold in Australia to get tested. We need to preserve the testing for those who needed it."
1.19am GMT
In Australia there are now 197 confirmed cases of coronavirus , including three deaths. From Monday, gatherings of more than 500 people will be banned. The chief medical officer Professor Brendan Murphy has just said this has put Australia in a good position.
We are starting these measures perhaps a little bit before some have said they are needed. We in Australia want to flatten that curve and keep this under really tight control. We do not want to see rapid increases like we have seen in some parts of the world. That is why we are moving early.
We have modelling that says an infection could take some months to go right through the community with a flattened curve. But it depends on how it develops. It might develop in focal parts of the country where we might be able to control it, if it develops in a number of parts it could last for quite a number of weeks. At the moment we are just focusing on containing and flattening it, and we will be reviewing our public health measures every day.
Continue reading...