italy's prime minister has said coronavirus cases could rise as travel restrictions are set to ease from the beginning ofjune. guiseppe conte said italy must accept the risk otherwise the country will never be able to start again. the uk government has defended its plan to reopen schools in england, and warned that the longer they're closed, the more children will miss out. teaching unions say they're not convinced that it's safe for more pupils to return byjune. barrack obama has delivered another scathing attack on the trump administration's handling of the pandemic. the former us president said many officials didn't even pretend to be in charge. mr obama made the remarks during an online address to students from historically black colleges and universities. 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, sometimejust 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 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. twelve days after that, 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. two days later, the cdc said their tests were flawed and had to send results back to atlanta. and the 15 within the couple of days will be close to zero, that's a pretty good job be done. by late february -- late february, three of more than 100 public labs had a working cdc test. they have the test and the tests are beautiful. anybody who needs a test get the test. by early march, six weeks since the first case was detected, just 3000

americans have been tested. one in 100,000 residents, compared to 3112 and south korea. i call it the unseen. the unseen enemy, there's a thousand different terms from it, but it snuck up on us. in mid-march, the us had tested 31 people per 100,000 residents. while the us caught up and surpasses south korea's rate of testing on april 15, 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 get corona. it won't stop me from partying. as life went on as normal, the virus was spreading around the us. people think it goes away in april. we are going down,

not up. we will have a flu shot for this ina not up. we will have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick... 35,000 people on average die each year from the flu. we have to step up our work on the flu. having regularly downplayed the threat, president trump declared a national emergency on march 13. every state to set up emergency operations immediately. three days later, the white house issued its social distancing guidelines. on march 22, new york reported 100 deaths due to covid. how do us states respond? using the one death in a million measure again, so we can one death in a million measure again, so we can compare one death in a million measure again, so we can compare states with different populations, you can see that 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. the states reacted quickly, going into lockdown several days before reaching that grim milestone in a bid to contain the outbreak. there are other areas thatjust aren't affected or affected very little. y will be closed on 100%? 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—at—home. while democratic governors shut their state down within two and a half days after seeing their first one and a 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 toll down. in contrast, more americans have died from covid—19 then 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 millennials in their 20s to children starting school. we began in copenhagen, where children have returned to school. denmark was the first country in europe to reopen its binary schools, and children are adjusting to a whole new way of attending weston —— primary schools. it has been hard not to not hug each other. you have to hug yourself. keeping kids apart requires some

imagination. we have activities to try to make them not worry. but they do worry. the schools been cleverly redrawn so each child only comes into co nta ct redrawn so each child only comes into contact with a very small number of other children. normally they sit to into. we have a class of 20, it's been cut down to two groups of ten. that's why you have the plastic. when they go outside, we have to divide those groups into even smaller groups. so the kids just have four other children they are allowed to play with and only given one half of the playground allowed to be in. my name is skye. i'm seven years old. we keep our distance when we play.

it was fear of the infection rate would rise and initially it did. but it's back down again. with so many pa rents it's back down again. with so many parents and work here, this is a targeted wrist. if we had to get the economy moving again, then we need to get the kids back into, not only schools, but also 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. 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 that had concerns, that they wouldn't let their child

come in the first week. after two weeks, they've rejoined, it's been no problem. this, they said, was impossible — children, social distancing. now, it might not be school as they know it, but they're making it work. it's a very beautiful danish song. they sing the direct transition is, when the light returns, it's back, the light is back. the bbc‘sjean mackenzie reporting. coronavirus has also transformed the lives of millions of teenagers in ways they could never 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're coping during the pandemic. today marks 48 days of being quarantined due to covid—19. and you're about to see how i'm spending...

..a day in quarantine. my time in lockdown. it's going to be a really different ramadan. we cannot go outside, we cannot go to the mosque, we cannot have a gathering prayer. which is really, really sad. in own language: i'm in physical education class, i'm in physical education class, and we're doing workouts together by zoom.

speaking russian translation: and as you can see, i'm just laying here on my bed, hibernating away. generally, everyone does this in our class. our school teachers are trying to help us feel more motivated. that coronavirus will end soon because they're trying to uplift us that there is still, like, a future. we can still be able to do things eventually. speaking portuguese translation: at 12.30, i've got a phone appointment with a psychologist. because of quarantine, our appointments came to end and they were interrupted. i call another psychologist who does appointments online — videos, calls or by the phone because i've found that the time i'm having counselling mainly for my anxiety helps me manage with social isolation. ijust woke up, it's like 2.30 in the afternoon. and i slept last night at 3.00. i can positively say that my friends do the same.

every teenager in mumbai does this. translation: we're recording a tiktok video. i am posting it on social media just for something fun to do. someone down there's watching. we probably look like total wallies! my dad and me go to the cafe and we make food for the underprivileged people and the people who can't afford food. we feed 850 people per day! it's been really hard adjusting to this lifestyle of staying at home, but i know it's for everybody's safety and precautions. we are at our daddy's workshop. we usually come here to help him in some way. the coronavirus pandemic has really affected businesses. i'm with my family the whole day. and that's pretty great because before we didn't spend all that much time together.

so i think being together now is something we should really appreciate. i really hope that when i wake up tomorrow, this pandemic is over. the life you thought was boring is the life you're hoping to get back to right now. and hopefully when the coronavirus ends, we will start to look at our world from a different and better angle. the coronavirus pandemic, like september the 11th and the financial crisis of 2008, has the potential to create shock waves that impact a generation, and one group hardest hit by all three events is millennials — young people born from the early ‘80s to the mid—1990s. my colleague lucy hocking spoke to three millennials to find out whether the pandemic could be one hit too many and how well equipped they might be to weather it. not very well equipped at all, because the story of the past decade, since the great financial

crisis in 2008 and recessions that followed that is that we have a cohort of millennials who really have gotten a delayed start, especially economically, in terms of our ability to pass various milestones like getting established in a career, home ownership, starting to save for retirement. we were just at a point within the past few years where it was possible for us to start catching up in those regards. now, all of a sudden, we have this major crisis coming as if from out of left field that is really going to tax us at a time when we weren't resilient enough to take this. bonnie, what impact has the coronavirus pandemic had on millennials in hong kong? the coronavirus has not still reached its peak in hong kong. so we have still to see what kind of economic crisis it will create in hong kong. but we are now trying our best to help ourselves, especially to the businesses who have been supporting last year's

anti—extradition bill so that we can keep these businesses flowing and we're trying our best to use our consumer power to help these small businesses. sarah, do you agree with this notion that it could indeed be millennials that end up being hardest hit by the pandemic? absolutely. when it comes to the economic impact of the pandemic, as was mentioned before, millennials were already hard hit during the recession. this is our second recession that we're experiencing as a generation. and in the united states, we've seen that more than half of millennials have already either lost theirjobs or lost hours when it comes to being able tojust support their families. and are there groups as well within the broader millennial bracket that are more vulnerable than others? of course, i mean, when we're looking at unemployment rates overall or the economic impacts overall, age absolutely stands out but we have to go deeper. about half of millennials are people of colour. so when we look at the impact of a pandemic on black millennials, on latinx millennials in particular,

we're seeing these numbers in terms of loss ofjobs and wages even higher, especially for communities that were already struggling. interesting, joseph, to hear how different ethnic groups within the millennial bracket might be affected. but in terms of the age range, do you think there are some millennials potentially who could weather the storm better than others? well, i think it's more a matter that if you look at ages within the millennial generation or cohort, different millennials are going to be affected in different ways. i mean, one important fact people tend to lose sight of about millennials is that at this point, we're older than a lot of people think we are. i mean, i was born in 1982. people at my end of the millennial cohort are starting to push a0 within the next few years. so, we might already be on the property ladder at this point. but we probably have a lot less home equity than our baby boomer parents did at this point in their lives. sara, if the economic well—being of millennials is defined by the struggles that they've had, how do you rate right the sort

of resilience of millennials? i mean, i think that i feel very grateful to be part of a generation that has led so many incredible movements for social change. and i think when you look at young voters in particular, they care about multiple issues. so, yes, we're digging in on the economy and our ability to support our families and our communities. but we're also looking at the treatment of members of our community, whether they're immigrants or they're undocumented people, how our communities are being treated by the police, how are our planet is being treated right now and how sustainable our entire planet is going to be for the future. so, young people are incredibly resilient because they're always looking toward the future and the future that we're trying to build together. and i think that is something that is really important to remember. absolutely we're concerned about how we support ourselves, that we're taking a holistic view to what it means to be part of certainly our country, but this planet overall. and that's why you see young people engaging in so many different issues across the spectrum.

joseph, we are all hopeful, of course, that there will be a recovery after this pandemic. so, a final question for you, and it comes from me really as a member of the media. do you think it's... ..we have to be careful about how we measure that recovery, that that might be seen differently in the eyes of a millennial? yeah. i mean, ithink that a big problem that we've had over the past decade is that know the politicians and the media are attempting to measure recovery in terms of headline statistics like gdp growth or the fact that the unemployment rate was going down. that tended to miss the fact that millennials in particular as young entrants in the labour market after the last recession had been hit in ways that can really lingerfor a long time. we have a lot of evidence now that if you enter the labour market during a recession, your lifetime earnings are likely to take a hit, that it will take a long time for your annual earnings to recover to the level that they might have been at if you had entered the labour market during an economic boom. millennials there on

how the pandemic has impacted their generation. for many, the transition out of lockdown carries a new set of challenges. we head now to italy to hear how one grandmother has adjusted to her new life after spending months in isolation.

that's it for now. a reminder, you can follow me on twitter at... ..or head to the bbc news website for the latest information. thank you for watching. hello. temperatures are set to climb over the next few days, peaking around the middle of the week with highs of 26—27 degrees in the south. a lot of dry weather as well, but the further north and west you are across the uk, the greater the chance of seeing some outbreaks of rain. that's certainly the case on sunday. this frontal system passing across the northern half of the country, but that front running up against this area of high pressure, which will be keeping things dry down to the south.

and the squeeze between that high—pressure area and the frontal systems pushing in from the west will drive the air up from the south. an increasingly warm feel over the coming days. so for sunday, we see some rain across the northern half of the uk. parts of north wales, northern england, just the odd spot of drizzle, which will tend to peter out throughout the day, and the rain across northern ireland and scotland will tend to fizzle around lunchtime. but we're expecting more wet weather to return from the west into the late afternoon. further south, we'll see some spells of hazy sunshine, light winds here. more of a breeze the further north you are, and those temperatures, well, 17 degrees in aberdeen, 20, maybe 21 towards the southeast of england. just 9 degrees there in lowick, but shetland will spend much of the day under sunny skies. now as we had through sunday night, we'll see these outbreaks of rain once again pushing across northern areas. further south, it stays predominantly dry with some clear spells, and certainly not a cold night. actually quite a mild one, 9—11d as we begin monday morning. and monday's weather set up is a similar one. high pressure to the south,

frontal systems to the north. notice, though, there is a bit of a gap between these two frontal systems, so even across northern areas, there will be a fair amount of dry weather. we see these outbreaks of rain drifting away from mainland scotland and up across the northern isles. there is something a little bit drier, still with a fair amount of cloud. similar story for northern ireland, northern england, the odd spot of rain. further south, it's dry with some spells of sunshine and slightly warmer again. 23 degrees in london. as we go into tuesday, it's another fine, dry and largely sunny day for much of england and wales, but for northern ireland and scotland, again we see cloud. we see some splashes of rain at times, but not all the time. temperatures here, well, between about 1a—18d, but further south and east you are, highs of 25—26. we could touch 27 in the south on wednesday. by thursday, the increasing chance that we'll see rain spreading from the west and it'll start to turn a bit cooler.

this is bbc news. i'm samantha simmonds. our top stories: italy's prime minister admits coronavirus cases could rise, as the country is set to ease travel restrictions from earlyjune. translation: we are facing this risk and we must accept it otherwise we will never be able to start again. the uk education secretary warns the longer england's schools are closed, the more children will miss out, as the government presses on with plans to re—open them. ba rack obama delivers another scathing attack on the trump administration's handling of the pandemic. it's game on — germany's bundesliga becomes the first major european league