Events may help to reduce transmission these measures of course should be based on local context and Risk Assessment and should be time limited even if you cannot stop transmission you can slow it down and save lives and foreigners innovate and learn this is a new virus and a new situation were all learning and we must all find new ways to prevent infections save lives and minimize impact all countries have lessons to share there are simple effective things we can all do to reduce the risk of infection for ourselves and those around us clean out hundreds regularly with an ill call base drive or shop and water cover your miles and knows we 0 in both if you cough or sneeze. Stay home if you are sick avoid unnecessary travel and large social gatherings comply with the advice of your local or National Health authority find and share reliable information and finally you can give together with the United Nations foundation and the suisse Philanthropy Foundation w. H. O. Is today launching because 19 soli diety Response Fund to enable individuals and organizations to contribute until now we have been there lying mainly on governments to support the response we trying all those countries who have supported doubly just tragic preparedness and Response Plan including japan which this week contributed 155000000. 00 u. S. Dollars now everyone can contribute funds raised will be used to coordinate their response to buy mosques gloves gowns and goggles for Health Workers to buy diagnostic tests to improve surveillance and to invest in research and development to give to the corbett 90 in solidarity Response Fund go to w. H. O. Dot i n t and look for the orange donate button at the top of the page we time and Google Facebook and the individuals who have already contributed every dollar donated is that dollar toward the saving lives we are all in this together i thank you. The dress. As we speak the press release on of the 1000 so that your Response Fund is being sent to you just to remind everyone that dispraise briefing is being broadcast on various platforms from our sides your Facebook Twitter account you tube channel as well as on linked in so we will start questions. From journalists who are listening us who have i do dialed in or who are watching us to resume so we will start with. Joey from yahoo finance. You can hear me out who have. Been great thanks so much what i just wanted to know in terms of all the social distancing techniques that are awaiting use and i would say theres been fine criticisms that im going to have you know put in by anybody whos going to hear me know really right now how drake thanks so much i just wanted to know in terms of you know little shows do things and you know let me tell you months that are being used and implanted theres been. Yes. This is a tried and tested method in slowing down the pace of them exploited and certainly in the cases of previous influenza pandemic social distancing has been used to some effect in slowing down the spread social distancing is based on a principle that you dont know whos infected and youre separating putting social distance between everyone weve said again and again many countries are not in that situation yet many countries are in a situation where the disease is recognisable cases can be detected contacts can be identified quarantined and it is a more Cost Effective intervention to separate. Some individuals from society then separate everybody in society from each other however where there is not a good handle where there hasnt been a good understanding of disease transmission where enough has not been invested in Core Public Health interventions such as case finding and pub and Contact Tracing then social distancing measures may be your only option to create distance between individuals but as weve said in Previous Press conferences there are very costly interventions in terms of. Societal acceptance very costly in economic terms and they have to be used in a time limited fashion with the specific purpose of slowing down infection enough to protect the Health System i think this is the difference very often in Public Health we use case training and Contact Tracing to go after the virus to stop to interrupt to push back thats the purpose of those public measures the purpose of social distancing is only to slightly slow down the virus so your Health System can cope the objectives are different and i think. We have to be clear that social distancing measures are not a panacea social distancing manager are not going to stop this epidemic theyre not going to stop this pandemic. Purely in their own right and if countries want to really turn this around for those countries that are in a position to do that and its been clearly demonstrated in places in other places then investing back in a measured comprehensive strategy as dr ted was referred to it so many times of trying to still do the kind of case finding Contact Tracing isolation to push the virus back and that is not to say that certain social distancing measures will not have a positive impact but they come at a cost and must be considered as dr curtis has said in the local context and theres a local context that is both in Public Health terms but also in societal acceptance terms a society may accept distancing in one part of the world and they may reject it in another and governments have to balance those genuine dilemmas around social and community accepted. To what mike has said he mentioned this comprehensive package of measures and the d. G. Has said this repeatedly social distancing is one aspect that we have been promoting here but this is in addition to a lot of other measures that we have also been promoting which include case and contact finding aggressive case and contact finding and testing testing needs to be appropriate in each country to ensure that we know who are cases and who are not cases it also includes hand hygiene washing your hands with soap and water using an alcohol based rub making sure that you also practice respiratory etiquette you are sneezing into your elbow or coughing into your elbow making sure that we mobilize all of our population it is very important that every Single Person on the planet knows what the signs and symptoms of coven 1000 are is the sign. And symptoms of cold in 1000 and is not sneezing and having a runny nose its a fever its a dry cough its aches and pains its very important that we know those differences some people will also have difficulty breathing and so knowing what the signs and symptoms are knowing what what your risk may be will help protect you and help protect your family thank you very much just to remind journalists to ask one question at the time so. You know with the buns recovering from a downturn from india bones or can you hear us thank you very much just to remind you always wanted to ask one question i dont im so happy and you hear me yes i heard here you know you know what ive been through probably my commissioning here the other blocked the travel for all foreign nationals coming from across the globe how does that relate to anything and you want to meet it sort of this yes we can you know go you have. A question you need to me i have a lot of the travel for all foreign nationals. He said that each sovereign country must decide upon its own measures to protect its population but we have also consistently said is that blanket travel measures in their own right will do nothing to protect an individual state in fact many countries who had outright travel bans early in the response this response ended up importing cases anyway and may have reacted later than they should have because they assumed travel restrictions would protect them saw i think its very important that the main focus in this fight is not on anything other than the Public Health measures case to take action isolation getting increasing number of tests on people who nor their status can protect others its a little bit like in the hiv epidemic until people could understand my status if i know that im in fact that i can protect others so we need to move to that sort of a stance and investing in the capacity to do that in fact investing in the ability to treat cases effectively and give proper reassurance and Community Education and Community Mobilization as part of an older all comprehensive strategy there is a place particularly inside National Borders for potentially restricting movement between zones as weve seen in certain places. But there is rarely just a vacation for blanket bans unless of course the context and the risk defines that so its difficult for us to comment on the individual action over the individual nation we would have to fully understand the Risk Assessment and the Vulnerability Assessment that was carried out in india. Thank you. I dont like them and then. I think if you hear me. Sing along. I want to. Get were going to do. You want to do your yeah like i know you can are there can be an example. I think theres something every everyone can do to to battle against it. You know to educate yourself about what this virus is where its circulating no one is at fault for getting infected with this virus we need to help each other as as as best we can we see many examples of countries helping each other within their own populations whether this is providing some support to families who have infected cases providing support to families who have members who are in quarantine providing support to Health Care Workers who are working on the front line bringing them groceries or helping them clean their homes. And we need to all stand up to stigma we need to stand up to people who are pointing out that someone may be at fault for being from a certain country this absolutely should not be tolerated in any form and we do see many good examples of it and we need to make sure that we promote that but everyone has a responsibility here to do the right thing and to help each other out during this difficult time. Because theres another one of the stigma and that is. This is here one is as maria has very well explained the issue of stigma associated with the disease or the profiling according to that but theres also something we need to avoid weve been speaking very much about those who are vulnerable in our societies and that vulnerability is very important to deal with but when we speak about the vulnerability we cannot forget migrants we cannot forget undocumented workers we cannot forget prisoners in prisons they may be serving sentences but they deserve no less protection under the law than others so when we talk about stigma we also need to to really look carefully at exclusion were working very closely with the office of the high commissioner for human rights with the red cross. Movement we were on the telephone this morning weve been speaking about joint activities around issues like this the director general has said many times we should we must leave no one behind. Because the only way to beat this is to leave no one behind so when we talk about stigma we also need to avoid that but we need to avoid exclusion as well were in this together and i hope we can finish this together yes. I fully agree and this is everybodys everyones business and nobody should be excluded. But the only thing id like to add to this is especially political leaders religious Leaders Community leaders have a special role to play here to bridge and also to tell our full wrist to. Ive had to just basic morally. Respecting others and this bias is a common enemy so i would expect and call upon all political leaders religious leaders and Community Leaders to play a bigger role here thank you very much lets try to move to kerching pakistan express tribune do we have someone like. Hello can you hear is please yes yes please go ahead. Hello we can yes we can hear you. Yes we can hear you please go ahead. Yes. Ok welcome please. Thank you very much. Its difficult to predict the epidemiologic outlook and there in any country i have personally worked in in pakistan on polio eradication for nearly 3 years and very much enjoyed my time working with some excellent pakistani colleagues. Working on Infectious Disease control among them dr run a softer. So i think theres a great capacity in pakistan theres a very Public Health capacity but there are also great challenges you have a highly mobile population you have great megacities and you have many underserved people saw there is a great challenge facing Pakistan Pakistan is also she demonstrated time and time again with doing it with polio with others eases. All of government all of society approaches can be made to work so we wish pakistan all the best all the best luck in the world and all of our assistance in supporting some some fine Public Health servants in your country. Just listening to this current a virus update from the World Health Organization and confirmation here that europe is the new epicenter of this outbreak we heard there that more cases being reported in europe every day than were reported in china at the height of its epidemic and then also a number of other remarks reiteration about the importance of testing and isolation isolating the sick and then we also heard some remarks there about social distancing measures canceling sporting events and things like that might not be able to stop transmission but it will slow it down and thats important because it will save lives on leave joins us live now in the studio neve youve been following this story closely and very important that we have here a shifting story we virus appears to have passed its peak in asia but its the reverse here in europe yes europe very much now the epicenter for quite some time Health Officials across the continent have been looking to china to see exactly what happened there and how the system situation was slowed down and what has been advised repeatedly by the show is that countries around the world need to take a much more aggressive stance when it comes to or just containing the virus anymore that ship has sailed but delaying the onset of the virus largely to reduce the impact on the Health Systems across the country so what weve seen in the past few days is country after country introduced social distancing measures shutting down sporting events closing schools universities nurseries those countries really strongly believe that thats the best way to go for a different situation here in the u. K. Though where that isnt being done and some eyebrows are being raised as to whether or not but its the right way to go weve seen quite a contrast dont we in the in the response in the u. K. Government which is much more limited much more gradualist they say and theyve theyve. Given their reasons and their rationale for that versus countries elsewhere in europe where for example in spain just had a state emergency declared thats what will the u. K. Is saying that theyre putting science of the heart of things they right now do not believe that there is any real effective reasons for forcing people to not go. To Public Events or closing schools what they are saying is that if you do have symptoms coronavirus like symptoms to isolate yourself for 7 days if youre elderly most certainly dont go on cruises if youre at school dont go on trips abroad but there are growing concerns in spain though is oversea at the forefront of peoples minds a state of emergency declared weve seen 4 towns put into isolation north of concerns about the capital madrid where there are 2000 cases now many of them in Nursing Homes the start state of emergency will last we believe 15 days and we gather the military has been drafted in to help enforce that spain the now the 2nd 2nd biggest number of coronavirus cases in europe after italy need thank you very much. Of course were following developments closely in iran as well Security Forces there are going to clear the streets of its major cities within the next 24 hours in a renewed effort to fight the spread of the virus according to state t. V. Shops streets and roads will all be vacated iran is one of countrys worst affected by the pandemic with the death toll of 514 and more than 11400 infections the country is struggling with a lack of life saving equipment has asked for an emergency 5000000000 dollars loan from the International Monetary fund he joins us live now from irans capital i mean this is really a massive crisis in iran not least because of concerns that the country simply does not have the resources or the medical supplies to deal with Something Like this. Thats exactly right the fact that the death toll and the total number of cases continue to go up those are really observable facts that point to the fact that iran is simply unable to get a grip on the spread of this outbreak throughout the country an expert panels that you can watch on state t. V. On a nightly basis all agree that the peak of the virus is coming up in the next 2 weeks in the last week president Hassan Rouhani has taken a political beating criticism from all sides all sides of the political spectrum who say that his efforts led by his Health Ministry arent doing enough to take care of this problem to control the spread of the coronavirus and so late last night Supreme