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tv   Outside Source  BBC News  April 30, 2020 9:00pm-9:31pm BST

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this is outside source on bbc news for viewers in the uk and around the world. we are covering all the latest coronavirus developments here in britain and globally. the number of americans who've lost their job climbs to more than 30 million — after another 3.8 million sign on in the past week. we'll take a look at the pandemic‘s effect on the global economy — and at how in many countries, people are struggling to feed themselves. britain's prime minister boris johnson says the country is past the peak of the coronavirus — but it's too soon to lift the lockdown.
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we can now see the sunlight and the pasture ahead of us. and so it is vital that we do not now lose control and run slap into a second and even bigger mountain. and south korea announces zero new cases of coronavirus within its borders, after an extensive programme of tracking and tracing contacts. hello and a warm welcome. we start in the united states, where 3.8 million americans signed on for jobless benefits last week, bringing the total number out of work to more than 30 million. this graph shows the number of unemployment claims over the last six weeks, showing how the country's virus lockdown has hitjobs there. and there may still be more to come, as michelle fleury explains. we saw 3.8 million americans filing for unemployment benefits and as you point out,
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this is a reduction from what we saw, which was above four million and certainly down from the 6.9 record figure that we saw in one week in march. however, there are still a staggering number of americans who have essentially lost theirjobs and are filing for unemployment benefit. in total, we are talking around 30 million. that is one—fifth of the working—age population who is now making claims, without a job. it gives you a sort of sense of the depth of this labor market contraction we are seeing as a result of the pandemic. and when is it comes to consumer confidence... it is impossible to bring to mind how people are coping, those who have lost theirjobs, those who are claiming unemployment benefits. when will we see a situation where people will be willing to spend, when we are going to see
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consumer confidence pick up? a short time ago, i was at a food pantry and there was a line about two blocks long. it is hard to imagine when you're in that situation queueing up to get food. at what point do you start to feel confident again? there is no end in sight, at least here in new york city, as to when the lockdown will end. therefore it is hard to imagine when the jobs market will pick up. and so that makes it very hard to see how you do get confidence. when that does happen, you talk to many people and they tell you the same thing, on one hand, they need to get back to work, they need the jobs and the income. 0n the other hand, they are nervous. they don't expect things to get back to how it was before. i was talking to a restaurant owner who was saying, with half a restaurant full, they can't make the kind of money they need. that is why you don't expect
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consumer confidence to recover soon. that is why consumer spending remains so muted with everything shut. michelle fluery there in new york. yesterday we heard the us economy had suffered its most severe contraction for more than a decade, after gdp shrank at an annual rate of 4.8% in the first three months of the year. today, the european union, the world's largest economic bloc, said its economy shrank at the sharpest pace on record in the first quarter. this graph shows the gdp of all countries using the euro. between january and march, there was a contraction of 3.8%, even worse than during the financial crisis of 2008. france registered its worst economic slowdown since the second world war. and the head of the european central bank says how much worse the damage gets depends on how long countries maintain their virus lockdowns. given the high uncertainty surrounding the ultimate extent of the economic fallout, growth scenarios produced by ecb staff suggest that euro area gdp
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could fall by between 5 and 12% this year — depending, crucially, on the duration of the containment measures and the success of policies to mitigate the economic consequences for businesses and workers. christine legarde with the impacts on the eurozone. here's aaron hesselhurst with more on the impact coronavirus has had on european economies. today, we saw the real evidence of what a lockdown does for some of these eurozone economies. as you said, the eurozone economies fell by 3.8% for the first three months of this year. we put this graphic together, just to show you how dramatic this is. take a look at that — because you can see that even during the financial crisis, we didn't have it this bad at all. and, again, christine lagarde also
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mentioned that the bad numbers, they are just starting to come. as you mentioned, the first three months — these numbers are forjanuary, february and march. we know we didn't go into lockdown until march, so what you're actually looking at is just a few weeks in march is what has caused this economic carnage. economic carnage indeed. 0ur economic carnage indeed. our thanks to aaron there. here's another way to visualise the impact coronavirus lockdowns have had on some of the world's largest economies. the international energy agency is forecasting a 6% drop in energy demand for the year, which would be the steepest fall in more than 70 years. and they predict global carbon dioxide emissions will fall by a record 8%. but the head of the iea, fatih birol, adds... to give you an idea of the scale of the hit to the us economy, let's take a look at the food supply there. this is an aerial photograph of a queue for a food
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bank in san antonio, texas, two weeks ago. at that time, unemployment benefit claims were about to rise above 20 million. and think about it, they are now 30 million. and this is a picture of a mountain of potatoes in idaho, taken a week ago. idaho is a major potato producing state and the places that would normally be buying them — restaurants and stadiums, for instance — are closed. so farmers are abondoning their crops because they have no one to sell to. and the us is the largest economy in the world — it has huge resources to stop people going hungry. stephanie heggarty has been looking at places where that isn't the case. food is not something that these people used to worry about.
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this pandemic does not treat everyone equally. when you are living on a daily wage, being out of work means no money for food. these are not animals, these are angry people. their world is being ripped from under them. the international labour 0rganisation says that 1.6 billion people could be out of work as a result of this pandemic. that is half the world's workers. rosa and her daughter were let go from theirjobs as domestic cleaners, with no pay. now they rely on a food bank. governments all over the world have plans to help
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people on the bread line, but it's not getting to some fast enough. and there aren't always food banks to fill the gap. it can be a choice between respecting the lockdown or trying to survive. we wanted to speak to this woman again but she left the city to her parents' village, where at least she can grow something to eat.
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femi can rely on friends as well, but they are also on the edge. they have nothing from the government so far. lockdown restrictions have cut her off from her local market and stocking up is not an option. as lockdowns go into a second month, the next problem is keeping
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a roof over their head. stephanie heggarty, bbc news. the huge global impact of the lockdown. now to the uk. the uk prime minister borisjohnson has said that the uk is past the peak of the coronavirus outbreak. this is the first time we've seen him at the daily briefing since he became ill from covid—i9. here's a little of what he said. we're going to have to beat this disease by our growing resolve and ingenuity, so i will be setting out
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a comprehensive plan next week to explain how we can get our economy moving, one, how we can get our children back to school, back into childcare, second, and third, how we can travel to work and how we can make life in the workplace safer. this is what the leader of the opposition had to say. i've been calling on the prime minister to have a plane for the next stage, an exit strategy. we've been pushing hard on that in the last week or two. the prime minister has now said he's going to have a plan next week. so i think that shows we were right to challenge on it. and i am pleased that we are going to see a plan. we'll look at it when we see it, but it's a step in the right direction. sir keir starmer there, in reaction to the daily press briefing. as always, we were given an updated death toll. sadly, 674 more deaths have been recorded, taking the uk total to 26,771.
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this means there's a chance the uk could overtake italy to become the country with the second highest death toll in the world — the us has the highest. as you can see, the latest figures show that the uk is around 1,000 deaths behind italy at present. the high uk death toll was put to mrjohnson at the press conference. here's his response. i think it's very, very important that people should understand that the collating of data internationally is, you know, bedevilled with difficulties and comparisons are very, very difficult and, actually, i think that the only real test, the only real comparator, comparison, is going to be possible at the end of the epidemic when you look at total excess deaths. 0ur political correspondent iain watson was watching the briefing for us.
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the prime minister doing his first press conference since he was in hospital, in intensive care for three days, flanked again by scientific and medical advisers. he wanted to give good news. he did declare we are past the peak of infection in the uk. he said we have been through a long alpine tunnel, seeing light at the end of that tunnel, but he didn't want to crash into another mountain. although he was giving some good news, he was downplaying the prospect of an early exit from the lockdown. we may well see some modifications next week when he comes forward with this comprehensive plan. probably not with a distinct timescale for each measure, but he may say how the economy will get moving again. there are major challenges coming out of coming out of lockdown. one of the challenges is,
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believe it or not, the compliance with the lockdown was greater than the government initially anticipated. they thought perhaps only three quarters of the population would go along with it, and now the problem for them is not so much some people chomping at the bit to get back to work but who are very worried about the health risk of getting back to work. if perhaps you can say masks ought to be used in the workplace or in public transports, that might help, but there's also a big challenge of trying to ratchet up the provision of public transport. some people are ill orfurloughed or off work, trying to make sure you can maintain social distancing on public transport. i think that is going to be a major challenge. although there are some reports about differences inside boris johnson's cabinet about how and when to raise the lockdown, i think a lot of the differences are not as much ideological but practical. what is the consequence of doing one thing that seems desirable if it leads to something else which has difficulties? get people back to work? great. 0vercrowd public transport? bad. and that's what they're grappling with during the course of the next
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week. i think there's going to be some indulgence from the opposition in terms of keeping the lockdown there if the scientific evidence isn't there to lift it hugely, but he will be pressed next week again on the detail and having a plan, a route map, out of the lockdown and what that might mean for people's safety. 0ur our thanks to 0urthanks to iain our thanks to iain watson, who was monitoring the daily briefing. stay with us on 0ustide source. —— 0utside source. still to come: the us space agency nasa releases the most detailed an raf flypast has been held over bedfordshire — to mark the 100th birthday of captain tom moore. the tribute marks his remarkable achievement of raising more than £30 million for nhs charities, by walking laps of his garden. the world war ii veteran has been promoted to honorary colonel to mark his centenary. here are some images capturing his 100th birthday. # walk on, walk on
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# with hope in your heart... it really is absolutely awesome, the amount of people who have been so kind. # you'll never walk alone... when the queen's 100, who's going to send her a card? you! laughter # you'll never walk alone. # you'll never walk alone. welcome. you're watching 0utside source live from the bbc. 0ur welcome. you're watching 0utside source live from the bbc. our top story... the number of americans who've lost their job climbs to more than 30 million — after another 3.8 million sign on in the past week.
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there's no doubt that covid—19 has posed many challenges, but we are seeing evidence of some countries starting to exert some form of control over it. not least south korea, which has reported no locally transmitted infections for the first time in more than two months. ros atkins has been looking at some the strategies that seem to be working. what's going right? hi, kasia stop good to see you. i think we need to stay straight up here. it will be many months before we have sufficient evidence to be sure which tactics proved the most effective in taking on covid—19. and comparing countries is fraught given the different ways data is collected. however, it is clear that some, in these initial weeks and months at least, have had more success than others. let's start with south korea — which has just reached a moment of great symbolism. here's our correspondent in seoul, laura bicker. even saying the words
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zero cases means a lot. they really went after this virus. they were ready for this pandemic. they had a test prepared within a few days of the first confirmed case. the testing, the tracing, and also the fact that they managed to kind of make sure that anybody who's been infected has been isolated has ensured that they've got it under control, which has meant they can give one—to—one patient care. and that, they believe, means that fewer people have died. that phrase "trace and track‘ is crucial. some, like south korea, stuck with doing it. some, like the uk, began and but then stopped it. in the short—term, that appears to have been important, given the uk death toll is far higher — though borisjohnson today argued his government took the right decisions at the right time. it's also worth remembering that south korea has not shut down in the way that many european countries have done. here's laura bicker again. yes, it was part of a social distancing campaign, yes, a number of places were closed.
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but restaurants, cafes have remained open, businesses have been able to trade. it's kept the economy moving even if it's been more sluggish than before. this is from laura too. she tweeted a little earlier... here is the article she is talking about. seven weeks back, laura wrote "how ‘trace, test and treat‘ may be saving lives." many experts would now say it has and is saving lives in south korea. we turn from south korea to hungary. it has 300 recorded deaths — far below the thousands who've died in italy, france, the uk and spain — and still far below if you factor in hungary's
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much smaller population. here's nick thorpe in budapest on some of the measures that were introduced there. early on in the pandemic in hungary, doctors realised that patients were catching the coronavirus actually in hospitals so they began emptying the wards, at first voluntarily. patients were advised to go home immediately. swift government measures and the self discipline of the population kept infection numbers down, but next week the government plans to relax some restrictions. translation: what comes next is going to be an enormous test. can this epidemic continue to be suppressed if we don't just sit at home, but start to live again? and for a different strategy, a different momentum and strong organisation would be needed. i'm very curious what will happen. any breathing difficulties? feeling of suffocation? weariness? no? this is a superman. in the coming weeks,
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prime minister viktor 0rban will face the biggest challenge of his long political career. reopening his country for business could cost many lives. how will he explain the choice to the public and will they believe him? nick thorpe, bbc news, budapest. well, from hungary to portugal. its government is planning to ease its lockdown from may 3. and it too has seen relatively low case numbers and fatalities. one possible factor here is the date that the virus arrived. the later the arrival, the more time there was for the government to take action, and the lower the impact — new zealand being maybe the best example of that. it says it's eradicated the virus. this graph is from politico. it tells us the dates the third covid—19 death was recorded in all of these countries — and how long it took for lockdown measures to be imposed after that point.
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that's a lot of data to take in, so here's a simplified version. you can see the third death was recorded in italy at the end of february — but it took almost a month more to reach that point in hungary and portugal — and by then, the governments there had already introduced lockdown measures. compare that to italy which took nine days from the third recorded death to suspend events — and two weeks more to ban nonessential travel and close nonessential shops. as one portuguese government adviser puts it... in other ways, portugal reminds us that we mustn't focus on any one factor in isolation. portugal has one of the oldest populations in europe — and while we know covid disproportionately impacts elderly populations, not so, at the moment, in portugal's case. which leads me to this quote i saw in the guardian. this is the advice from a professor of biology called carl bergstrom. he says...
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he goes on... which is why, while governments, scientists, journalists — all of us — are understandably trying to establish what's working against this virus, no one knows for sure. they certainly don't. ros, thanks so much for that. there's much more information on our website, and you can get updated figures from the day's daily briefing. let's take a breakfrom let's take a break from the coronavirus. nasa has released the most detailed survey yet of polar ice melting. this animation shows the north of greenland. the red areas show ice loss.
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the blue, snowfall that's adding to the ice. the pattern changes over the years as warmer air and sea water melts increasing amounts of ice. the same is happening in antarctica too. 0ur science correspondent jonathan amos is in cambridge. we have had a number of reports like this in recent months looking at the trends in the antarctic and in greenland. the difference here is that we are talking about a highest resolution satellite system in operation today, so the americans runa operation today, so the americans run a laser space. they fire a laser down to the ground and they count the time it takes for that beam to bounce back up and that tells them how high things are. and in this case, it's the height of the greenland ice sheet and the height of the antarctica ice sheet. they've done that since 16 years now, back to about 2003, and in that time, they've been able to track the trends to see how much the ice sheets are losing. and in the case of greenland, about... in the case of greenland, about... in the case of the antarctic, it's 118 of greenland, about... in the case of the antarctic, it's118 gigatons a year. if you don't understand what a year. if you don't understand what a gigaton is, it's a year. if you don't understand what a gigaton is, its equivalent to the amount of water you need to fill 400,000 0lympic sized swimming
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pools. so it's a lot. thanks for watching 0utside source. will be back next week. now on bbc news, adam fleming, laura kuenssberg, chris mason and fergus walsh discuss the latest on the coronavirus epidemic as britain's prime minister returns to lead the daily press conference. we're going to start tonight with an e—mail you got tonight, laura. who's been part of the brock park as family for years. she got in touch with us to tell us about her mum eileen who died a couple of days ago of covid—19 in the care home. and she has given us permission to read some of the e—mails. she has given us permission to read some of the e-mails. she has. it
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sta rts some of the e-mails. she has. it starts my mum was 93 on the 15th of april. we couldn't celebrate with her due to lockdown. the fantastic ca re her due to lockdown. the fantastic care home staff gave her a cake and a party. we hadn't seen herfor six weeks. on the 17th of april we had a call to say she had a temperature and was a bit poorly. we thought it was a recurring infection. 0n the 19th we were told she wasn't too bad and the worst play she could be was in hospital. she had alzheimer's and vascular dementia, our hearts were breaking as we felt she would think that we'd forgotten her. she started getting worse. the deputy manager said they bought tablet computers to the patients and arrange a zoom call on wednesday the 22nd of april i called to see how things were. she had tested positive for go vent and she deteriorated. no point in zoom. daniel from the care home went back to her room and sat with her so that she wasn't alone. she passed away at
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345 that afternoon with this wonderful young man staying with her until the very end. can you imagine sitting with a covid—19 positive great—grandmother with basic protection so he could phone us after she had gone to make sure we knew that she had not been alone? we are broken. how do we thank him for sitting in ourchair are broken. how do we thank him for sitting in our chair in our shoes? now we are organising a tiny funeral. the reason we want to read that out tonight is that mo wrote to me she didn't want her mum to be just a statistic. and we read that out, i think to me made that point. she's not. no one is and i think it's important we all remember that. welcome to tonight coronavirus broadcast. the coronavirus newscast from the bbc. hello, it's adam in
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studio. aunt laura and studio both in west minister. and fergus in newport. and chris also in west minister. hello everyone. and luke who is back at the podium doing a press c0 nfe re nce , who is back at the podium doing a press conference, it was the prime minister borisjohnson. press conference, it was the prime minister boris johnson. well enough to be out of hospital and back at work. but still sending not exactly full of energy are back to his normal self. let's have a listen as he bounded to the podium. good afternoon, welcome everyone again to this number ten press conference. where i'm joined by professor chris whitty, chief medical officer and sir patrick balance our scientific advisor. i'm sorry not to be part of this trio for so long. yeah, the three amigos that we call them right to start. back together. it was a
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big moment today. in terms of their progress of this disease. since the prime minister it was last at the lectern and downing street there's been more than 26,000 deaths. astonishing numbers that are hard to wrap your head around. but the government scientists, the cabinet and the prime minister had decided that today it was time to say, we have passed the peak. we've been talking about that on this programme for some time. are we there, is it a plateau, can we say that we've actually officially moved through, that the disease itself has passed its war stage in terms of this by? and today the prime minister in a very high—profile moment decided that it was the right time to say so. that it was the right time to say so. and of course because the prime ministers back the vivid maybe not quite accurate metaphors are back to. here is today's. we've come through the peak or rather, we've come under what could have been a vast peak. as though we've been going through some huge alpine
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tunnel and we can now see

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