stops some vehicles on the road attacking just good luck for them. risking it all guinea on al-jazeera. police gone to politicize this virus but please the politicians from the world health organization as it urges the u.s. and china to join forces to fight covert 90. i mean this is al jazeera live from doha also coming up british prime minister boris johnson remains in intensive care with coronavirus for the government says his condition is improving. i cannot in good conscience continue to about the

campaign they cannot win and which would interfere with the important work we quiet of all of us in this difficult hour. u.s. senator bernie sanders drops out of the democratic presidential race as a result of the pandemic. and u.n. experts point the finger at syria's government for carrying out chemical weapon attacks on civilians. so then the head of the world health organization has defended the agency's handling of the coronavirus prime then it follows president donald trump accusing the w.h.o. of being china centric and you threaten to cut funding of the organizations chief says now is not the time for such threats the focus of all political parties should be to save their people please don't politicize this virus.

it exploits the differences you have at the national level if you want to be exploited and if you want to have many more body bags then you do it if you don't want many more body bags then you refrain from politicizing it my short message is please quadrant in politicizing. our white house correspondent kelly how he joins us from washington d.c. kimberly the. chief there pushing back hard against criticism received. yeah and that has been followed up in just the last half hour or so by a statement from the u.n. secretary general and i'll read it here i've just gotten it it's sort of pushing back again on this criticism about. the world health organization being perhaps

china centric something that the u.s. president said yesterday and also the fact that it may have declared have been slow to declare a public health emergency this is what the statement says it says obviously in such conditions is possible that the same facts have different readings by different entities once we have finally turned the page on the epidemic there must be a time to look back to fully understand how such a diseased emergent spread its devastation so quickly across the globe and skipping ahead a few sentences but now is not that time now is the time for unity for the international community to work together as solidarity to stop this virus and its shattering consequences so that really echoes the statement we heard from the leader of the world health organization there now is not the time for finger pointing which is what the u.s. president did as he struggles to explain to the u.s. public how this was that the united states was caught unprepared whether it be with

personal protective equipment whether it be with warnings to the american public whether it be with traveling advisories and shutting down borders or whether it be just in terms of the tasking kits the list goes on and on the u.s. president as under the spotlight he is running for reelection and he had to point the fingers as he did to the world health organization but now we have the world health organization to add a statement from the secretary general of the united nations say this is not the time for finger pointing we're still dealing with this pandemic response and the world health organization we should point out also in its briefing saying rather vigorously that it has been working and pushing back on the criticisms that may have been too slow to respond or has not had an adequate response right and his numbers rise in the united states member of the coronavirus toss also spoke to and he felt she he's been talking about the time when americans will emerge from the woods. yeah they certainly those numbers

continue to rise i've just checked them again fresh numbers we have more than 401000 infections in the united states and almost 13000 deaths the bottom line in all of this as we've been told repeatedly this week is not going to be a good week in the united states particularly when we see that hardest hit state of new york still grappling as the epicenter but we've seen other states start to pop up in louisiana is one of those states so there is this concern that as people start to get positive news from some of the public health officials that we're getting a handle on things we're seeing a flattening of the so-called peak or curve in states like california or washington state and some people might take that to mean it's time to get out of the house the bottom line is there are still restrictions on social distancing guidelines to stay at home that extends all the end of the month those are still in place having said that public health officials are now already preparing for beyond april 30th what

that might look like who will be allowed to go to work they are gathering all of that data what we're told us that we could have some additional guidance coming in the in the coming days and weeks in fact that's something that will certainly be brought up as the court of virus task force briefs again at the white house at 21 g.m.t. or i can read things there was that speech later can be held at that in washington d.c. well the death toll in the united kingdom continues to soar with almost a 1000 deaths in the post 24 hours more than 60000 people have been infected nationwide including the prime minister boris johnson who remains in intensive care he's been given oxygen but his condition is said to be improving he is receiving excellent cat from the n.h.s. team that's in thomas's the latest from the hospital is that the prime minister remains in intensive care where his condition is improving i can also tell you that he has been sitting up in bed and engaging positively with the clinical team.

i let's me now to rory challen suze outside the hospital where the british prime minister is in tents of care and yes improving but still there rory. yeah that is the 2nd update that we've had today in which the prime minister's condition has been described as an improving the downing street spokesperson said the same thing. wrong but also added that he was clinically stable so i mean if we if we're looking for signs that things are heading in the right direction for the prime minister then i suppose we can take this as such a sign. as you say he's not out of line see you yes things are starting to look up of course. to leave that to he's back in his job i think there's still going to be a significant degree of worry. about his team amongst many people around the

country among his friends and family as well but that things look like they're moving the right direction right and right what about the number of fatalities the number of cases the death toll now almost a 1000 in the past 24 hours yeah i mean the day by day things do seem to be getting worse and worse and worse in the u.k. in terms of the number of people who are dying at least in the press conference that. soon aqua's was chairing that we also heard from the deputy chief science officer angela mclean and she was drilling down in some of the ficus and what she was saying was that. the social distancing measures do seem to be working she was pointing at. train stations around the country and

saying that you know our social distancing was brought in. declines by 94 percent so obviously people are staying inside what this is. leading. to new cases of coronavirus in the u.k. i'm not exaggerating out of control she said she said that also that the rates of hospital admissions seems to be slowing so. she did something. that the phrase around without it numerous different countries from. she was saying that we do seem to be seeing a flattening. in the united kingdom botts. warning is that doesn't mean that we're suddenly going to see a decline in the daily death toll because that. means the hospital admissions the people who are dying now are probably admitted to hospital a week 10 days ago. we might have to wait. week or 10 days before we start

seeing the data coming down as well at the moment today the worst of the pandemic so far in the u.k. . already thanks very much indeed. in london. the use scientific chief has resigned saying he's frustrated with the blocks response to the pandemic amount of fraud he has led the european research council for just 4 months as a 4 year post he told the financial times newspaper member states had failed to coordinate on health care policies well european finance ministers they failed to agree on joint measures to counter the pandemics economic fallout and that's all for an overnight teleconference that went on for about 16 hours divided over how to share the e.u.'s financial burden estimated to be as high as $1.00 trillion dollars it comes as the world trade organization predicts up to a 3rd of all global trade could be lost this year. spain has announced more than

750 people have died in the past 24 hours with new infections also on the rides the number of fatalities has been increasing again in recent days spain is one of the worst affected countries in the world with more than 146000 confirmed cases a french military aircraft carrier has been instructed to return to port off the sailors on board started showing symptoms of coronavirus nearly 40 people on the shoulder goal are now being placed under medical observation screening team with test facilities has been sent to the ship to prevent further spread of the virus. in other news the un's chemical weapons watchdog has released its 1st report explicitly blaming the syrian government for sarin and crore in attacks against civilians the organization for the prohibition of chemical weapons looked at 3 attacks in 2070 in the northern syrian town of lots of men in hama province says

there are reasonable grounds to believe government forces used bombs containing sarin that hit heavily congested civilian areas including a hospital report goes on to say that bashar al assad's heavy use of chemicals weapons has been a crucial part of his regime's military strategy and let's bring in our diplomatic editor james bays joining us live from the united nations and james investigators now have come out with more specifics to tell us all about it. well as you know nic it's been a very long and horrific saga the use of chemical weapons in syria it goes back to 2013 and throughout this time lots of people including the obama administration to trumpet ministration so they believe that the assad regime was responsible but getting an international body to actually look at this has been difficult russia in particular a close ally of the assad regime has blocked some of those attempts finally we have this report just released and it looks at this stage we can look at other attacks

later but it looks at 3 attacks in march 27th t. in and it finds that in those 3 attacks which were all on the same town in ad lib that 2 of them were sarin being dropped by the syrian air force in bombs and one of them was chlorine but being dropped but by a barrel bomb so showing that they believe after a great deal of detailed analysis although they weren't allowed into the into the country by the syrian government they believe the assad regime was responsible according to this report the next stage is that this report is sent here where i am u.n. headquarters to the u.n. secretary general antonio terrace so i asked his spokesman can we now have following the results of this report a plant condemnation from the secretary general about the use of chemical weapons by the assad regime 1st so i will say that the report is been done by the o p c w they are responsible for any questions regarding the report is that is

is very should be directed to. anyone it is an a.p.b. o.p.c. there is no very we're by identifying and by the by by with this report. the secretary general his position is unchanged that any it is. intolerable that anyone anywhere. in impunity for use of. equally and exert their will and it's imperative to identify and hold those accountable who are used. chemical weapons so he says it's intolerable he said people should be held accountable this report holds the assad regime accountable and the secretary general won't mention the name of the syrian government and president assad why well i think the main factor is

that a permanent member of the u.n. security council is russia it is the closest supporter of the assad regime and that also explains sadly why the information in this report is unlikely to little lead to any justice for these crimes the only way you could do something like that or the only available route is to the international criminal court and that needs a referral of the un security council russia is a permanent member of that council and it's proven in the past that whenever syria comes up the idea of referring syria to the international criminal court as a permanent member they have their veto and that prepared to use it james thanks very much indeed james bays there from the united nations.

now in the united states u.s. senator bernie sanders has dropped out of the race to become the democratic presidential nominee that leaves a former vice president joe biden as the presumptive challenger to president on a trump in november sundered says it was a tough choice. i know that there may be some in our movement who disagree with this decision who would like us to fight on for the last ballot cast at the democratic convention i understand the opposition but as i see the crisis gripping the nation exacerbated by a president unwilling or unable to provide any kind of credible leadership and the work that needs to be done to protect people in this most desperate hour i cannot in good conscience continue to mount a campaign that cannot win and which would interfere with the important work required of all of us in this difficult hour and that ben is on is let's speak to alan fischer he's been listening in he joins us from washington d.c. via skype. and i guess it doesn't come as

a surprise doesn't. now it has really been politically dead man walking the same since super tuesday that was really when bernie sanders lost momentum you remember that joe biden didn't do well in the 1st 3 contests in the caucuses in the primaries but then he came back from the political dead in south carolina after that he immediately got the endorsement from people to judge from it close but sure that was significant and important for him and he did very well on super tuesday it made things very very difficult for bernie sanders but when he talks about how he has moved the political debate in the united states there's no doubt over the last 4 years he's done exactly that people are no talking about providing some sort of universal health care in the united states they are talking about free state college for people in the united states he's taught they are talking about income equality because of the issues that bernie sanders has raised now barely sanders

did not give an endorsement to joe biden that's not surprising because you don't give away all your cards at the table he wants to make sure that a lot of the ideas a lot of the things that he's been talking about will form the platform of the democratic convention and also the democratic election platform as they move in to the presidential campaign that you remember 4 years ago that bernie sanders lost to hillary clinton he gave his support then but many of many of his supporters did not want to vote for hillary clinton and stayed away from the polls that led to a lot of people pointing fingers at their supporters saying they let trump and i don't think that will happen this time around because bernie sanders describes donald trump as the most dangerous president the united states has had in its history he says that joe biden is a good guy he will try and rally his supporters to support joe biden come november and for joe biden the way is now open for him but he does have a problem doesn't in the sense he doesn't have right is not the platform of his

opponent. some people would say that can be a positive and it can be a negative he doesn't get to hold big rallies he doesn't get free media in important swing states but then he doesn't stand in front of the white house every night and do what donald trump does which ends up with a great deal of criticism on twitter and also in the media commentary out donald trump has said that betting sanders has essentially lost the nomination because of democratic party machinations it's what he said but 4 years ago and his appeals to bernie sanders voters to come and vote for him the difficulty that donald trump of course has is that many people who would describe themselves as democratic socialists don't automatically see donald trump as a natural home and don't trump is doing that for a big reason because he hasn't been able to grow his own base so to do that you try

and take away from someone else's base which in this case would be joe biden but certainly in all of the match ups that we see joe biden beats a dog trump and many of the key states in the election come november but the election is in november not known exactly right alan thanks very much nate on official washington d.c. . well preliminary data from the united states indicates that black americans are more likely to die from coronavirus highlighting the inequalities in health and access to medical care was enough or let's hear a broad. it's been said that the coronavirus doesn't discriminate with the rich famous and powerful among those who fall in l. but that doesn't tell the full story because some statistics suggest that if you're paul from an ethnic minority you're more likely to get sick or even die covert 19 is killing black americans at a higher rate than anyone else. in the morning. yesterday.

gary harrell has lost 10 friends or family members to the virus 8 were black one hispanic everyone knows someone like this and. he lives in louisiana which along with the states of illinois and michigan has released preliminary data indicating a disproportionate number of african-american victims of the virus on monday more than 70 percent of fatalities in louisiana were black though they make up only a 3rd of the population there we've known literally forever that diseases like diabetes hypertension obesity and asthma are disproportionately afflicting the minority populations particularly african-americans. people with those underlying conditions are usually more affected by the virus but analysts suggest black americans are also overrepresented because they are more likely to live in urban

areas in cramped conditions and struggle to access quality health care the same trains have been reported in the united kingdom with black or asian patients more likely to be affected by the virus than white patients it's a tremendous challenge it's terrible. and provide support to african-american citizens of this country who are going through a lot but it's been disproportional gary says his community needs more than support it needs action the most prudent thing for us to do to honor the memory of those who've been lost is the prepares us next time said that he and i there are great peace the number of lives lost and definitely remain mindful that as we were prepared this time we've lost so many and they can ever do it again. no doubt one of the many tough lessons to be learned from this pandemic and example on

al-jazeera. state governor andrew cuomo says the discrepancy in minority communities needs to be investigated let's actually get research and data that can inform us as to why are we having more people in minority communities more people in certain neighborhoods why do they have rate higher rates of infection i get the co-morbidity i get the underlying me on this issue but what else is at play are more public workers latino and african-american who don't have a choice frankly but to go out there every day and drive the bus and drive the train and show up for work and wind up subjecting themselves to in this case the virus well let's take this issue on now we can speak to that shot him he's saying he's a british government adviser and also

a board member of the private foundation trust joins us on skype from bradford in the united kingdom that is to say welcome to the program it's evident is now the coronaviruses is thrown into sharp focus just how vulnerable ethnic minorities are around the world. i think it's going to have me yeah absolutely i mean some startling information coming up the usa it seems and similar data in the u.k. and myself one of the commentators that mentioned quite early on that there is a significant raise to minority communities around cope with 19 yeah and if you just look at those figures the new all figures particularly a 34 percent fatality is 34 percent fatalities are hispanic 28 percent are black and 27 percent of whites should we therefore in places like the united kingdom and the united states where things are approach your are at their peak be especially aware of this is there anything that we can do now you know i think you know there

was early missed opportunities if you look at the government communication which we update it's always done in english and only in english and there hasn't been any translation or and multi languages tunisian got a very mind that the u.k. has a significant minority population in a good proportion and for them english is not their 1st language you know we also have a sizable. population many children with years so communications is a very important thing you know i think at this stage it seems like given the number of deaths reported at think progress 1000 in the last 24 hours you know we're heading somewhere towards the peak and it's very important that we enforce these messages and ensure that minority communities are educated about these risk factors as well and now this has been. thrown up into sharp focus what do we want to say about the future what can we do for the future how can we assure that these vulnerable communities are not at risk like they are right now. but i mean

there was some positive news today from the chancellor just barely you know she said like announced 50000000 pounds for charity and 350000000 pounds of that it's allocated was small charities but i think it's very important that they stage. minority organizations who are in a position of a consequence of this realities is that it's not very many organizations are in a position nationally that can support local communities and this is a very important thing that we ensure that you know local charities have a grasp on their local communities those are operating from culture sensitive services are given the support that they need you know a very important factor in this is the impact that is going to have on the mental state of those people who are affected by this yes in the family currently there's issues around being able to attend hospitals so no homes have been let to

dying on their own there's little restrictions around attending funerals we know that people. and those of the iniquities they search the books additions and rituals about the way that we practice our faith in the way that we follow through in death and these are real impact on the societies in those communities right this is far but it is something that we knew about before coronavirus but it's just only been talked about now because of what's happening. well i mean we know nicky that you know any communities i'm only communities live in some of the worst social economic and health outcomes from many minority countries you know and there is a high infection that rate we've seen from the other countries such as it really and spain in particular but those in underlying health issues those over the age of 60 are particularly at risk one of the factors we know salvation communities for

example in the u.k. is very many of us live in intergenerational families and that poses real risks where you've got 3 generations living in a house so the younger generations may not feel the same pressure given the statistics and the data that's come up that call we will pose a risk to them but they certainly have respect to to the rest of their family members in particularly their parents and potentially their grandparents who may be living in the same household so seldom is just great to get your perspective as to appreciate that's and saddam hussein there talking to us from bradford in england thank you negate. now let's bring out of this a current of rise building with a brighter story and an experience shared around the world the view of what's called a supermoon that is likely to be visible till thursday all about us as a story. under lockdown in normally bustling new delhi birds sing out in deserted streets. there is no one in greece is tourist hot spots

. the. only prayer echoes across riyadh people are staying harm but if we look up nearly 8000000000 of us can share in something else a superman is above us rising on tuesday evening and is expected to be the brightest and biggest of the year in china restrictions of east and a reduction in pollution means my sucking up what are the fate in the end it's really hard to see i'm in this big in beijing it's been my 1st time saying one source anger for families and that the epidemic situation in china is getting better and better this represents something good especially on the supermoon shows up. a super moon is a former net is closer to earth than usual to us it will look about 30 percent brighter and 14 percent bigger than normal and even happens roughly every 14 months

some astronomers expects the moon to come closer to earth than at any time since 1940 yet use whether you're over down in your hole in central england or you're over down in your home in suburban washington d.c. or in you know southeast asia will be able to see ultimately the same and it's something that we can share globally and we're right now at this point time being something that connects us all i think is really important. and at 360000 kilometers away the man in the moon is keeping a good social distance shallop ballasts his ear. so this is out there these are the top stories in the head of the world health organization has defended the agency's handling of the coronavirus pandemic president donald trump accused of being china's century and threatened to cut

funding the organizations chief says now is not the time for such threats the focus of all political parties should be to save their people police politicize this virus it exploits defer to. the national level where the death toll in the u.k. continues to surge with almost a 1000 deaths in the past 24 hours more than 60000 people have been infected nationwide including the prime minister boris johnson who remains in intensive care he has been given oxygen but his condition is said to be improving he is receiving excellent cat from the n.h.s. team and thomas is the latest from the hospital is that the prime minister remains in intensive care where his condition is improving i can also tell you that he has been sitting up in bed and engaging positively with the clinical team european

finance ministers have failed to agree on joint measures to counter the pandemics economic fallout so after an overnight teleconference that went on for roughly 16 hours divided over how to share the financial burden it comes as world trade organization predicts up to a 3rd of all global trade could be lost this year u.s. senator bernie sanders has dropped out of the democratic presidential race that leaves former vice president joe biden as the presumptive democratic nominee to challenge president donald trump that's in november. the united nations chemical weapons watchdog has released its 1st report explicitly blaming the syrian government for sarin and chlorine attacks against civilians the attacks that targeted sites in hama province including a hospital. right of states with the headlines here on our deserve more news coming up right after inside story.

out of lock down china lifts restrictions on the city where the coronavirus pandemic began 4 months ago but is it too early and walk to the lessons for the rest of the world this is inside story. hello welcome to the program. much of the world is now imposing strict lockdowns to stop the spread of coronavirus but the chinese city where the pandemic began is easing restrictions.