of scotland, and elsewhere it is dry. abundant afternoon sunshine. still breezy, but the wind is not as strong as yesterday. it does still feel a bit chilly in the breeze. overnight, the winds ease a bit further in england and wales, allowing a widespread frost to take hold. a patchy frost in southern and eastern scotland. towards the north—west of scotland, a chance of rain. increasing cloud into northern ireland. for most of us, temperatures are holding up. turning very wet for monday across the far north—west of scotland, especially into the western isles. increasing cloud and breeze for northern ireland. the best of the sunshine will again be across england and wales, and temperatures will be a little higher tomorrow. hello, this is bbc news. the headlines: the national health service could soon be "overwhelmed" with coronavirus patients, warns the british prime minister. london's mayor urges

people to act responsibly. u nless unless people stay at home, unless people stop using public transport and less essential, unless people stop interacting with each other, more people will die. boris johnson urges people to "make the heroic and collective national effort" to slow the spread of the virus. he cautions against visiting loved ones on mother's day. nhs england writes to 1.5 million people, who are most at risk — strongly advising them not to go out for 12 weeks, to protect themselves. in europe, italy edges closer to complete shutdown. spain extends its state of emergency by 15 days, as the number of deaths there rose by nearly 400 overnight. more than a billion people in india are under a 14 hour—long curfew to try to limit the epidemic. and in america one in five people are ordered to "stay at home" — as state authorities struggle to control the pandemic.

now on bbc news, the latest information and health advice on coronavirus, including what the symptoms are and how to self—isolate, presented by victoria derbyshire. hello and welcome to this special programme. over the next half an hour, we are going to try and tell you as much as we can about coronavirus to help you answer that you can share the information with others. for the latest on the spread of the disease, you can always head to our website for information on how it is affecting people in your community and your country. first, here is the bbc health and science reporter laura foster on what coronavirus is. coronaviruses are a type of virus. the one we're all talking about is new and it causes

a disease called covid—i9. now, most people will only be mildly affected by it, but it can kill. it starts by infecting your upper respiratory tracts, which are the airways from your nose to just above your vocal cords. you may develop a fever as your immune system starts to fight the virus, and a dry cough — that's one where you do not produce any phlegm. the virus can then spread to the lungs, making it harder for people to breathe, and it can cause pneumonia. in the most serious cases, people can die from the coronavirus. this is because the immune system can go into overdrive and that can lead to organ failure. so we need to do what we can to stop this virus from spreading. as it gets into your body by breathing it in or through your eyes and mouth, the best thing to do is wash your hands regularly and properly for at least 20 seconds, catch your colds and sneezes in a tissue, and avoid touching your face. the two main symptoms of coronavirus

to look out for are a continuous dry cough and/or a fever. if you are sneezing a lot, got a runny nose or a headache, you may be ill but you've probably not got coronavirus. so how high a fever is a coronavirus one? and what exactly is a continuous dry cough? well, it's when you cough and there's no mucus or phlegm — basically no gooey substance in your tissue. and this is not the odd cough here and there — it has to be coughing regularly for no other reason, such as clearing your throat or smoking. so how high a fever is a coronavirus fever? well, if you have one, you will know about it! technically, it's a body temperature of more than 37.8d celsius, or 100 fahrenheit. but if you've not got a thermometer, basically you will feel hot and your chest and back will be hot if someone touched you.

if you have either of these symptoms, then you need to stay at home for seven days. and if you live with other people, they need to stay at home for at least 14 days. but if your symptoms get worse or they do not go away, if you live in the uk, then you need to contact the online in nhs iii coronavirus service. if you live abroad, then call your local healthcare provider. washing your hands is key to preventing the virus from spreading. it sounds like an easy thing to do, but there is definitely a right way and a wrong way. washing your hands often and for at least 20 seconds is vital in helping to stop the spread of coronavirus. not sure how to? well, here's how, and make sure you watch until the end when we have got a special treat for you. so, first, we create a lather. rubbing the back of my hands. in between the fingers. do the ends of my fingers. here as well. and again, my palms.

my wrists. the top of my hands again. rinse. but i'm going to use a tissue to turn off the tap to stop cross contamination. so that's how to wash your hands properly but now, here's your surprise. elevator muzak plays. millions of us across the world are being told to self—isolate. that essentially means shutting yourself off from contact with anyone else. it has been recommended for anyone suffering with flulike symptoms, as well as those who are cast as at risk, such as people over 70 and those with underlying conditions like asthma and type i diabetes. but what does self isolation involve? here is the bbc‘s medical

correspondent, fergus walsh. if you're told to self—isolate, that means staying at home, not going to work, school or other public places. you shouldn't have any visitors. if you develop symptoms, a fever or cough, then seek advice first by phone. don'tjust turn up at a medical centre or hospital. if you live with others, then you need to stay in a well—ventilated bedroom with the door shut. if you have to share a bathroom, then use it after everyone else. don't share towels and toiletries. your waste should be double—bagged. if you test positive, it will be separately disposed of.

if you live on your own, you can order shopping online, or get friends to help, but they should leave it on the doorstep. the coronavirus causes a mild illness for four out of five people. self—isolating will help protect older people and those with underlying health problems from getting infected. one of the main ways to stop yourself from contracting coronavirus is to not touch your face. that can sometimes be pretty difficult. here is why. don't touch your face. contagious. and i haven't touched my face in weeks! because we can't help it. it's part of our dna, we're hard—wired to do it. we know this because humans as young as foetuses in utero touch their faces.

so every time you tell yourself "stop touching your face! "don't touch your face! "if i touch my face, i'm going to get really ill!" you're telling yourself to do something that is entirely unnatural to you. when we are touching our faces, what we're doing is calming ourselves down. when we touch certain areas of our faces, what we're really doing is we're activating certain pressure points which then activates something called the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the thing that makes us calm ourselves down internally. we see the same response in dogs and cats. children often model the same behaviour as their parents. so if our parents, when they are shocked, they touch their faces, or when they are surprised, or if they are upset, they touch their faces, we're much more likely to do exactly the same thing. the irony is, at a time when it is more important than ever to not touch your face, unconsciously, your mind is constantly moving to a place where it can better protect you by doing the things that it knows will soothe you.

and so, your unconscious mind will prompt your hands to go straight to your face. while it's almost impossible to totally stop touching your face, a key way that you can go about making it easier to beat or take out the habits which lead you to do it, so that might mean wearing glasses instead of contact lenses, it might mean wearing less make—up so you don't have to top it up throughout the day. it might also mean creating habits around how you use your hands. so rather than perhaps when you are always moving around and having your hands like this and making it so easy for them to land on yourface, making an effort to cross your hands and put them on your lap. then when the urge comes, to pick your hands up and touch your face, you will be more aware of what you are doing and you'll be quicker to catch yourself. i cleaned my hands before i touched my face! next, one of the common images from this pandemic is people wearing masks, on public transport, to some of the world's most famous places like saint marks square.

but how effective are masks in stopping the spread? one of the reasons that people wear masks is they think that it's going to protect them from the virus, but the virus isn't floating around in the air. so it's not protecting me against anything, because it's not there. it is probably going to be on my hand because of shaking hands with someone who has got the virus. and i have transmitted it — i have carried the virus to my face. if you are in an environment where everybody else is wearing a face mask and you are not, it may make you feel vulnerable because you feel like you don't have the protection everyone else does.

but logically, if you'e not close to people, they're not coughing and sneezing on you, then a face mask isn't necessary. the virus enters the body through mucous membranes, meaning the eyes, the nose, the mouth. and it transmits from person to person, generally by us touching our eyes, nose or mouth. or if we are inhaling droplets directly from someone who is sneezing or coughing. the best way for the general public to protect itself against coronavirus and other respiratory viruses is really careful hand hygiene, so that's really washing your hands with either soap and water — or alcohol gel if soap and water is not available — especially when you think that you've been exposed, so if you have been out in public places and touching surfaces that other people might have touched, that really is the best way and bringing attention to "am i touching my face?" one of the problems if lots of people who don't need face masks are using face masks or stockpiling them, it means that there aren't

enough face masks available where they are really needed for people like healthcare workers who are on the frontline and dealing with suspect or confirmed coronavirus cases. the vast majority of people are not susceptible to getting a severe infection. for most people, it will be a mild illness — a bit like having a cold or a cough or the flu. it's the older people with comorbidities who are at risk, so you don't need to go and panic buy face masks. throughout the week on bbc news, we have been trying to answer as many of your questions as possible, and there are so many. in a moment, we will hear from doctor rebecca cooper, a public health consultant in the uk working on the coronavirus outbreak internationally. but first, here is doctorjeremy oliver. he is a clinical psychologist with an expertise in well—being, explaining how people can manage their mental health during this crisis. anxiety is completely understandable. what i would say is anxiety

is generally felt both in the head and also in the body as well. and so you are turning questions over and over again in your mind, wanting to get answers. and that is exhausting. it is telling your body to be on alert all the time. so where possible, try and have a section of the day where you try and answer the questions you have got. look online, watch programmes like this, but also give yourself a break. recognise that there are some questions that you won't be able to answer. like, a key question might be, am i going to get the virus? no epidemiologist can tell you. you can watch red dots on a map, but that is not going to tell you whether you will get the virus. the question you can try to answer is to try to change into a practical question. what can i do to stop myself getting the virus, or what can i do to help stop other people getting it? and there is plenty of information about that. let's crack through, because there are so many, as i said. this is from somebody who doesn't leave them name. i run a large retail shop.

two people have been isolated with the virus as they have all the symptoms. we have worked in store for these people for two to three days while off—colour but not realising it was the start of the virus and before being isolated. should we now be isolating all staff and those who volunteered for 11! days, for all who came into contact with them? i think, in terms of what you should do with the staff, if there are staff that have demonstrated symptoms, if you have worked in close contact with those staff, you should now think about isolating yourself. but obviously i understand about businesses, it is tricky. but i think, for the public health, we need to be really aware that actually we are trying to minimise the spread of that infection now, and that, if staff have shown sentence, then we should think about isolating now. nicola says, i am a single parent, i lost my husband 18 months ago to cancer. i've got twin girls aged seven who are scared to death, if i catch this virus, what will happen to them? who will look after them if i am poorly, they think. i already take two immunosuppressant

drugs to arthritis and have a poor resistance to chest infections every year. how can i self isolate and look after my kids as well when i get sick? the grandparents are in the at—risk age category and my mum just had a stroke a few weeks ago. i will really struggle if i get sick and i have to go hospital. what happens to the kids if so many people are in self isolation? that is a message that is representative of quite a few messages that are coming in. single parents, a single parent with a health issue, and understandably really stressed and worried. absolutely. as you say, that is going to affect a lot of people. what we're doing locally, we are assessing community groups so we are aware there are vulnerable people in our community and we are starting to reach out and saying, look, if you need help, contact us. as a local labour counsellor, i can speak to constituents and get in touch with the council and try and arrange appropriate help. if there are community

groups in yourarea, i would encourage you to get involved with them and look up who your local counsellor is and get in touch with us, we are there to represent you and to speak to different services and to try and help you as best we can put up you are not alone, i totally understand you might feel that you are but you really aren't. as local councillor i can say that we are there to help and for you as well. for somebody who has ocd, this is really, really alarming. people with ocd may have various different sorts of obsessions and the fear of contamination is one of the main ones but also other obsessions may be around order. for those people who have been through treatment, their psychological treatment for ocd will be teaching them to the environment and the world is not a feared place that they think it is so for some

people, it will potentially undermine the treatment, it will make people think that they were right all along, that they were right to be fearful. a core feature of ocd is if somebody feels that their compulsive act hasn't been done properly, they often then feel compelled to redo it, to reassure themselves that they have done the compulsion properly. for hand washing, that can sometimes motivate people to keep on washing their hands because they will think, oh, i am not sure i washed the base of my thumb properly, i'm going to have to repeat that and then they might start to fixate on, oh, i didn't count that time so i might wash it for 20 seconds that time, that may lead to a repeated chain of hand washing. being told to self isolate could cause some concern because it

could make the person think that this is a serious situation and i was right to fear this. it may bring out some relief because for somebody who is anxious they might find it difficult to leave the house anyway but they also may have avoided in the past going out because they fear that they cannot control the environment outside the house. i think some positive things people can do so they don't make their condition worse is staying in touch with people. if they are self isolating, make sure there is still phone contact, make sure there is contact via video messaging platforms so they stay connected to people. make sure they do things that are distracting so things they might enjoy doing, jobs around the house that might distract them from these thoughts, that is another key message,

and the third thing is to make sure you follow the advice, but don't upscale and excessively hand wash and excessively clean because that is going to make the situation worse. it would only usually be if somebody had a predisposition to ocd so of course there is the risk that, in this outbreak, that people could become very focused on something and we could become very obsessed with hand washing and that repetition and temporary relief that brings may set off a pattern of obsessive—compulsive symptoms, so it is possible, it is not a high risk, it is not the case that the coronavirus is going to, you know, excessively increase the incidence of ocd in the country or in the world but it is possible that for some individuals, it may lead to ocd symptoms and it may bring that diagnosis about.

across the world, medical researchers are racing to find a vaccine for the virus but it is thought that could be up to a year to 18 months away. richard wescott has been given special access to a team at cambridge university who are trying to find a key to beating the disease. the race to find a vaccine for coronavirus didn't start in a lab, it started on a computer. this is the dna of coronavirus? yes. within weeks of the outbreak, the coronavirus dna had been read and put online for scientists across the world to access. like many others, the cambridge team has been using it to find exactly what they are up against. the sequence helps us to understand how the virus actually looks in terms of its physical properties, and that is really important because the spike protein that you see around the edge of the virus, that is what we need

the antibodies to attach to to prevent the virus from entering ourselves. that is interesting, so these letters give you a picture of what it looks like and how you can attack it? yes. things then move into a tightly sealed lab. they haven't got the actual virus in here yet. their early tests are done on the safer, man—made copies of parts of the virus. this is a highly restrictive lab. very few people are allowed inside, we are not allowed inside but we are going to be able to talk tojonathan who is leading the research using a bit of technology to get hold of him. hi, can you hear me? richard? other experts like you chatting online and sharing ideas about what to do next? i was in australia in geelong, i was in british columbia,

i have been in the us, and we are having teleconference daily on the situation. the variability, the transmission dynamics, and really, trying to get as much information from the pandemic to get as much information. have you ever known anything like this in your career? in terms of the speed? it is certainly spreading globally quickly and very quickly and has caught everybody off guard. they have body uttered testing possible coronavirus vaccines on animals but to sure it is safe and effective, it could be next summer before a human version is finally approved. richard westcott. on the race to find a vaccine for this virus and, while the number of people who have died from the virus continues to rise, at the same time, tens of thousands of people are recovering. including julie from singapore

who told the bbc her story about her isolation and recovery. i didn't have anything — not even a sniffle or cough. however, on february 7, really early in the morning, like three o'clock in the morning, i woke up and the room was spinning. hello. isolation is basically four walls with a door. i got my food through a secure hatch, my medication, my change of clothing, my towel. yes, you have the phone, you can text someone, you may have a video call, but just being completely no human interaction. i almost felt like i wanted to go knock on the wall and just talk to the other patient next door,

just to have some conversation with a human being! when i was going through the critical stage, one other thing that i encountered was really breathing. it was just so laborious, trying to get from my bed to the bathroom with just, i don't know, five metres away, just walking to the bathroom, and it was just challenging. finally, around the world, despite the devastating impact the virus is having on tens of millions of us, many are coming together in acts of solidarity. here are just a few examples. singing.

music. that is it for now. a reminder that you can keep up to date with the latest developments on the virus. you can contact us on the bbc website. thank you for watching. hello. it's a dry sunday out there across most of the uk. notjust dry, but there's a fair amount of sunshine as well. that's all because it's high—pressure close to the uk, it seems like it's a long way away but its influence is still being

felt across the british isles in terms of settling the weather down, making most places dry and allowing a good deal of sunshine out there. the exception, north, north—west scotland staying mostly cloudy, a bit of patchy rain in the western isles, some of that continuing into the afternoon. elsewhere, we've seen some cloud this afternoon, a lot of that will be clearing away to allow abundant sunshine. there's still this east—south—easterly breeze. it is a bit lighter than it was yesterday, still noticeable and particularly across these north sea coasts holding temperatures seven or eight celsius, whereas elsewhere, many of us creeping into double figures. into tonight, that breeze eases a bit further in england and wales, with clear skies there will be a widespread frost taking hold. frost in southern and eastern scotland as well but north west scotland into northern ireland, there is a breeze there. some cloud around, still a bit of rain into the western isles, temperatures here though are holding up. elsewhere, it's going to be a frosty start to monday, temperatures could be down to —5dc

across parts of north—east england, for example, to start the day tomorrow. a lot of fine weather to come, again particularly in england and wales, barely a cloud in the sky. some brightness in scotland and northern ireland will turn increasingly hazy but no brightness for the north west of scotland and the western isles, it will turn very wet here into the afternoon. a burst of quite persistent heavy rain around, and a brisk breeze. where you have the sunshine, temperatures will be a little bit higher. this weather front bringing the rain to north, north west scotland, is still there on tuesday. so initially this week it's in no hurry to move away, that means another very wet day for some of us here on tuesday. the rain totals will start to mount. could see a few spots of rain elsewhere, in scotland and northern ireland, increasing cloud and breeze. still a lot of fine weather through much of england and wales, and here temperatures are a little bit higher. so for some it's turning milder. that's not going to last, the weather front towards the north—west as the week goes on will sink south, it will tend to weaken and as that clears on through, we are left with a bright end

to the week, a few showers and a chilly northerly breeze.

this is bbc news. the headlines: the national health service could soon be "overwhelmed" with coronavirus patients — warns the british prime minister. london's mayor urges people to act responsibly. unless people stay at home, unless people stop using public transport unless it is essential, unless people stop interacting with each other, more people will die. borisjohnson urges people to "make the heroic and collective national effort" to slow the spread of the virus. he cautions against visiting loved ones on mother's day. nhs england writes to 1.5 million people, who are most at risk — strongly advising them not to go out for 12 weeks, to protect themselves.