hello, this is bbc news, with martine croxall. the headlines... the uk education secretary warns the longer england's schools are closed, the more children miss out — as the government presses forward with plans to re—open them. day—trippers are warned to stay away from rural and coastal areas of england this weekend, amid fears the number of infections could rise. people in italy will be able to travel both internally — and in and out of the country — from the beginning ofjune — as the country's

strict lockdown eases top—flight football is back in germany — the bundesliga is the first major european football league to restart, with matches taking place in empty stadiums. and now on bbc news, annita mcveigh has more information and health advice on the coronavirus outbreak, in this special programme. hello and welcome to the latest in our special programmes on the coronavirus pandemic. i'm annita mcveigh. on today's programme, how the covid—19 pandemic has affected three generations of people, from schoolchildren to millennials in their 20s, and we will be looking at the impact on the elderly as one italian grandmother adjusts to her new

reality after months in isolation. but, first, tensions about easing the lockdown continue across the united states. donald trump is eager to restart america's economy as soon and as fast as possible. but there are many others warning the president against acting too quickly. they claim the pandemic is far from over. here's a look at the situation this situation the united states finds itself in. as the world tries to find an end to the lockdowns, it's important to go back to the beginning. president trump did take steps to keep the virus out. when i learned about the gravity of it, sometime just prior to closing the country to china... but there were holes in his travel bans and it took six weeks before he ended travel from europe, the other hotspot. it is going to disappear one day, like a miracle. it will disappear. during this time, the virus spread largely undetected within america's borders.

why wasn't more done to stop it? let's start by looking at the big picture. the main strategy for mitigating spread has been to lock down communities. china did it in wuhan, then the whole of hubei province. then we saw it in italy. they did it in the north and then the whole of the country. some have compared response times in relation to first cases or first deaths. but to factor in population size, we actually want to find the date when a country had one death per million residents due to covid—i9. and those points were reached at different times in various countries. we can compare how quickly countries reacted by putting those dates as day one on a timeline. germany, france and the uk locked down within days, learning their lessons from italy, which took six days to lock down the entire country.

the us, however, still hasn't declared a national lockdown, more than 45 days later. if you look at what's going on in this country, i don't understand why we're not doing that. we really should be. so why didn't the us act sooner? in the end, most states did issue stay—at—home orders, covering 92% of the us population. but, as the chart shows, some states took action much faster than others. we will look at that more detail in a moment. in more detail in a moment. there are practical reasons for the different approaches. it is a big country with some places hit much harder by the outbreak than others. plus, power is not as centralised in the us, so a national lockdown is not as easy to do. but the main reason why the us missed an opportunity to get ahead of the virus was a lack of information on how bad the outbreak really was.

on january 20th and 21st, south korea and the us confirmed their first case. we have it totally under control, it's one person coming in from china, and we have it under control, it's going to be just fine. four days later, the cdc had developed a test kit and sought fda approval, while south korea was already shipping its kits to labs across the country. 12 days afterwards, the cdc finally followed suit, while south korea was already developing a faster test and deploying it. looks like, by april, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away. i hope that it's true. two days later, the cdc acknowledged that its tests were flawed and labs had to send results back to atlanta. when you have 15 people and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero,

that's a pretty good job we've done. by late february, merely three of the more than 100 public labs had a working cdc test. they're there, they have the tests, and the tests are beautiful. anybody that needs a test, gets a test. by early march, and six weeks after the first case was detected, just 3,000 americans had been tested. one in 100,000 residents, compared to 3a2 in south korea. i call it the unseen enemy. there's a thousand different terms for it, but it snuck up on us. in mid—march, the us had tested 31 people per 1,000 residents, people per 100,000 residents, and while the us caught up and surpassed south korea's rate of testing on april 15th, those initial delays combined with the message coming from the president, had serious consequences for the us response. without good data from testing,

us states were essentially flying blind throughout february and early march. if i get corona, i am not going to let it stop me from partying. as life went on as normal, the virus was spreading throughout the us. we are in good shape. but think it goes away in april. the people i getting better. we are going down, not up. we will have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner. if you have the flu, you recuperate. 30,000 people on average die each year from the flu. maybe we have to step up our work on the flu. when you lose that many people, that's something. having regularly downplayed the threat, president trump declared a national emergency on march 13th. we're merging every state to set up emergency operations centre is emergency operations centres

effective immediately. three days later, the white house issued its social distancing guidelines. on march 22nd, new york reported 100 deaths due to covid—19. how did us states respond to the worsening situation here? using the one death in a million measure again, so we can compare different populations, new york, the epicentre of the outbreak, shut down after four days. newjersey could see what was happening to its neighbour and brought in restrictions after two days. louisiana, a hotspot thanks to mardi gras, took six days. these states reacted quickly, going into lockdown several days before reaching that grim milestone in a bid to contain the outbreak. there are other areas are not affected or very little. why would we close down 100% of the country? yet these southern states did have deaths from covid—19, and still waited much longer to order state—wide shutdowns.

it took georgia and south carolina two full weeks before they ordered residents to stay home. while democratic governors shut their states down within two and a half days after seeing theirfirst in one million deaths, republican governors waited more than a week longer. nowhere in the world has responded perfectly to this pandemic. but other countries have succeeded in keeping their death tolls down. in contrast, more americans have died from covid—19 than were killed in the vietnam, afghanistan and iraq wars combined. in those early weeks, the us missed opportunities to contain the spread and save more lives. next, how the pandemic has affected young people from milennials in their 20s to children starting school, and we begin in copenhagen, where children have returned to school. denmark was the first country in europe to

reopen its primary schools, and children are adjusting to a whole new way of attending lessons, from hourly hand washing to unusual playground layouts. it has been hard to not hug each other. you can't hug each other, you have to hug yourself. keeping kids apart requires imagination. we're not worried about the virus at all. when they came back, we had lots of activities to try to make them not worry. but they did worry. we had to give up on that. it wasn't needed? not at all. the school has been cleverly redrawn so children early come into contact so children only come into contact with a small number of others. normally they sit two and two. you have a class of 20, cut down to two groups of ten. that is why you have the plastic. because those two groups cannot mix?

no, exactly. when they go outside on their breaks, we have to divide those groups into smaller groups. so the kids just have four other children that they are allowed to play with and they are only given one half of the playground to be in. my name is skye, i am seven years old. we keep our distance when we play. we can't play catch. what do you play instead? we hula hoop. and there is a lot of this. how many times do you wash your hands a day now? five or six. denmark reopened primary schools very early on. it was feared the infection rate would rise, and initially it did, but it is back down again, and with so many parents in work here, this was a targeted risk. if we had to get the economy moving again, then we need to get the kids back not only to schools

but daycare to try to enhance productivity for those forced still to work at home. it was a challenge to do yourjob while having him home, it's much more easy for me to concentrate, i have a row of hours where i canjust work. a lot of parents wrote to me that they had some kind of concerns, a few parents also concerned that they would not let their child come in the first week. after two weeks, it has been no problem. the kids down there at home said, why can't i go? this, they said, was impossible. children social distancing. now, it might not be school as they know it, but they are making it work. it's a very beautiful danish song. the direct translation is, when the light returns, the light is back. coronavirus has also transformed the lives of millions of teenagers in ways they

could not have expected. so what is the new normal? we asked young people in 1a different countries to record their day, from when they wake up to the moment they went to bed, to find out how they are coping during the pandemic. today marks 48 days of being quarantined due to covid—19. you are about to see how i am spending a day in quarantine. my time in lockdown. it is going to be a really different ramadan. we cannot go outside, we cannot go to the mosque, we cannot have a gathering prayer. we are really, really sad.

i am in physical education class, we are doing workouts together by zoom. as you can see, i am lying on my bed, hibernating. generally everyone does this in our class. our teachers are trying to help us feel more motivated, that coronavirus will end soon, they are try to uplift us, that there is still a future, we can still do things eventually. at 12:30, i have to phone appointment with my psychologist. because of the quarantine, our appointment came to an end and we were interrupted.

i call another psychologist to do a video call or by the phone, because i have found that the time i am having counselling, mainly for my anxiety, it helps me manage with social isolation. ijust woke up, it is the afternoon. i slept last night at three. i can positively say that my friends do the same, everything, every teenager in mumbai does this. i am posting it on social media just for something fun to do. someone down there is watching, we probably look like total wallies.