around the world more than 7000 are dead and more than 190000 are infected with the coronavirus exponential growth meaning the numbers i just said are already out of date here in germany the top health authorities today raise the warning level from the pandemic to high and in the united states doctors say the country is at a tipping point if the public refuses to heed the warnings now it will only be a matter of time until hospitals and clinics are overwhelmed. in berlin this is the day. we should be restricting our contact with other people to the extent that we can the less contact we have with other people to us chance we're going to become infected we have proposed solutions to enable people to go home now and allow the

transport of goods that are needed across europe. we have to keep cross border transport off supplies flowing by making shared sacrifices and temporary changes we can protect the health of our people and we can protect our economy because i think our economy will come back very rapidly those industrial mash that they use on construction sites are perfectly acceptable for health care workers to be protected from their respiratory disease so you have to be careful everybody here is the sense of caution so it's my opinion. also coming up the state puts the german chancellor says this is no time to take a vacation and for those outside the country the government is earmarking 50000000 euros to bring them home the ministry of foreign affairs has agreed on a unique program with commercial airlines which will bring back german travelers from particularly affected areas in coordination with us the airlines will make

flights available for the. going to our viewers on p.b.s. in the united states and all around the world welcome but we begin the day looking at the coronavirus time line getting longer and longer people here in europe and north america are being told that this unprecedented shutdown of business could be worse than the great depression of the 1930 with restrictions on social activity possibly lasting through the summer u.s. president warning the emergency could last into september and french president emanuel telling his country we are now at war against the virus that as the european union today shut its borders to all non e.u. citizens trying to cross measures never taken before and measures that resonate all over the world today india closed its iconic monument the taj mahal iran with the 3rd highest number of infections released 85000 prisoners in an effort to combat

the viral spread and today the philippines became the 1st nation to shut down its stock exchange indefinitely germany is preparing for a major spike in new infections today plans were approved for the armed forces of the country to begin setting up a new hospital here in berlin to treat up to 1000 patients german chancellor angela merkel spoke earlier this evening after an emergency video conference with other e.u. leaders we discussed a number of different issues and some depth today the 1st was that all of us have agreed with the proposal of the commission to prevent those who are traveling to europe from countries that are not known to man you know it to the left region know it to the u.k. that we are strict entry essentially a ban on entry into the e.u.

with very few exceptions this will be put in place by. the e.u. for 30 days and germany will be implemented implementing this immediately it is the job of the german ministry of the interior and of foreign affairs to put this into place was the german chancellor speaking earlier this evening to talk about these unprecedented measures being taken i'm joined now here at the big table by our chief political correspondent linda crane melinda really mean these are decisions that have never been made before on the list we've got this 30 day ban on most nonny you citizens traveling into the european union that's right this basically is the european union trying to get out in front of a number of unilateral measures that e.u. countries have been taking to try to shut their own borders and those are borders also within the e.u. and those shutdowns are causing big problems within the passport free area known as

the schengen area goods being stopped at the border truck drivers waiting hours and hours and hours on parking places in big crowds in other words an infection risk as well now in order to try to get out in front of all of this the e.u. commission made a proposal to shut the external borders of the e.u. hoping that countries will then perhaps start to relax some of these internal border restrictions not only because of the economic effect but also because of the principle schengen is supposed to be a passport free borderless area it already was questioned in the migration crisis if you remember in 2015 when countries also began trying to close some of those borders so that's what basically is happening here and it's very much at the instigation of french president mccaw who was concerned about these internal border shutdowns and has been pressing hard for the external border move it as a as a as central

a form of compensation but interestingly enough the chief of staff of the president of the e.u. . actually himself said you know where the closures really aren't going to be doing much for any of these countries because the fact is the virus is already here with in the european union and basically the effects are going to be marginal in stretches of the too late today we heard predictions here in europe and in the united states that this pandemic could easily morph into a global recession that could be worse than the great depression of the 1930 s. absolutely so apparently that was also a topic at this video conference of leaders this afternoon on tuesday afternoon with some focus on what can be done there too the e.u. commission has made some proposals it wants to create a fund of $37000000000.00 euros that would be used to support health systems small and medium sized enterprises and also provide some support in labor markets to

vulnerable workers beyond that oss so some talk apparently at this video conference today about relaxing some of the e.u. restrictions on state support for companies and government support for companies so that the governments can do more to try to keep them afloat and also budget deficits so all of this also very much up ending some key you rules but it's a crisis and an attempt at least now by brussels to do some crisis management after having been largely sidelined to till now. ok let's talk just about germany and its place in the e.u. germany has a huge budget surplus right now and has often been criticized for its its fiscal policies which have been sure that it has this extra money you know but it's money for a rainy day and we've got the rainy day right is there is there a sense here in political berlin that see we told you so well there certainly i

think that sense is there and i think there also is certainly a commitment in this country to provide fiscal stimulus as well and we've even seen for example the very conservative state of the various saying that it's going to do a great deal more than it normally would in trying to get at it that it was willing to depart from its own balance budget rules the fact is germany does have some other systems in place that are part of its approach to capitalism namely systems like short work which ensure that workers even in the face of great reductions in demand are kept on staff and their wages are topped up with government funding so that's also an effort to try to keep companies afloat and provide workers some protection and that's quite unique in the german system and worked very well during the financial crisis so we'll see how it works this time this time around to w.c.

political correspondent elizabeth cohen melinda as always thank you thank you. were germany is not yet under a general walk down but the government's appeals for people to stay home have left much of the country looking and feeling like a lockdown w.'s political correspondent simon young reports there's a curious come in the normally pulsating hearts have been laid on tuesday morning phone fewer people than usual were out in about in the german capital. foreign minister heiko musson announced another unprecedented measure a travel warning for the entire planet and said no unnecessary trips should be made in addition the government will provide $50000000.00 euros so german citizens currently abroad can come home. also i think the ministry of foreign affairs has agreed on a unique program with commercial airlines which will bring back german travelers

from particularly affected areas within the next few days but what we are talking above all about iraq oh the dominican republic the philippines egypt and the mall deaves in coordination with us airlines will make flights available for the. flu. on monday drastic steps were announced to beat the virus shutting many shops apart from essential businesses such as food stores and pharmacies. civic life is shutting down schools the actors and museums are being closed nationwide as even children's playgrounds are deserted many parents are having to stay at home to look after their families the government is offering them extra support that's just here for endings in what we're seeing is that many families are wondering about money issues they want to know how to deal with a drop in income this is a huge concern it's not

a private matter it needs to be resolved and the state has to help itself that if you're interested. politicians continue to search for the right responses to this rapidly evolving crisis. 20 here the big table now is steve it beardsley from d.w. business a check to every american citizen $4000.00 right it sounds like something we've never seen before and maybe it isn't a check to every american it sounds very trump in riots it sounds like something that sort of opening and gets your attention and maybe that would be part of the plan here is to really sort of boost confidence to give people that money to pay some outstanding bills or to go and spend it while the economy is still open remember that 2 thirds of the u.s. economy is based on consumption right or consumer activity that means the travel industry the hotel industry the restaurant industry all the industries that are now being hit very very very hard direct help was actually a part of the last big recession package it was just often put into tax measures tax credits for example and it was put into. payroll withholdings was basically

your withholdings were sort of decreased this is a lot of difference this would be an eye opener and it could hopefully join up a little bit of excitement or a little bit of help for people and i can imagine we'll get some criticism because a lot of people who don't need the money would be getting a check for a $1000.00 of course that is one claim you know in recent years a lot of it was that this sort of looks like the universal basic income brackets and what you've already are saying that but as we've seen even the u.b.i. actually has support on both conservative and liberal side so you might be surprised where some the support is coming from mitt romney the senator has been tied with this already saying look this is a good idea and then on the democratic side sherrod brown of ohio so there might be more support than you expect ok so we're talking about $850000000000.00 here in this stimulus plan is that comparable to recession packages we've seen in the past you know we're definitely getting in that territory 153000000000 dollars measure by george bush to answer the recession when he was still in office about 780000000000

dollars from obama of course we're not quite at the auto bailouts and the industry bailout the airlines will get a portion of this money will be $50000000000.00 under the proposal is important to repeat it's just a proposal you know there are so. it is different than what's happening now that sol credit freeze up and then a lot of businesses were damaged which then brought demand down this demand is very down and artificially so almost because there are fears over the virus but there are also so many restrictive measures that are basically keeping people home and shuttering businesses it's something that really economies have never really seen and so they don't know how to respond to it and that's why you're seeing this effort to really get as close as possible to the business and to the individual themselves they want to get as close as possible to directly pay directly give that money to them because there's a fear that they might not have enough time otherwise if they try to run it through the tax system through the banks that it may not help people are going to face bankruptcies because it's a good point we heard from some political leaders in the united states today warning that this could be worse than the great depression of the 1930 s.

all of this money going for measures to stop the virus are there people saying that actually the cure is going to be more expensive and worse than the actual virus it would be a cold calculus right because we're talking about lives here and so no one would really actually put it in that way but it's a good point to make when we try to understand how this will shift the economy and how this will shift livelihoods livelihoods will change personal fortunes will change industries will be reshuffled frankly because of this and so there will be a long term effect just as there was from the great recession 10 years ago so whether it's bigger or not will leave that to experts to say when i look back but it's clear that everything is going to change because of this and that's the way to peers right now and that uncertainty is really looming still stephen beardsley with the business stephen thank you very much helping us go through as we said unprecedented decisions being made today thank you. my next guest tonight says that pharmaceutical companies view covens new details how an

entire industry betrayed the people it was intrusted to protect and heal honor is a new york times best selling author and an award winning journalist and he joins me tonight from miami florida your presence good to have you on the day with this corona virus pandemic that we are in right now. would you say that it is in the interest of the pharmaceutical companies for the crisis to get worse. no i think you know exactly in line with what your previous guest said that would be a cold calculus that nobody's going to say that people the pharmaceutical companies the executives the scientists working in the labs they would like to be able to come up with a vaccine not just for the profit but because it serves everybody's purpose it's going to save this financial collapse if they face is going to save lives and they come to the rescue they look as though the superhero with the white cape on so there's a lot of reasons why they do really want to do it many of them very good ones the researchers you say the of course they want to find a vaccine that would find

a cure but the system in which they're operating in the united states it is it's unique or it's different when you compare it to what it is here in europe when it comes to medicine and profits isnt it. no question about it as a matter of fact you know i talk about this throughout the book that we the united states the only country in the world the pharmaceutical companies unfettered power to set their own prices in europe you have the good common sense in germany the u.k. france spain is the other countries to negotiate to have set prices with them you know every drug that's accrued to automatically be available for everybody they have to show you that if they're charging exorbitant prices it's going to cost less to the health care system in the long term treatment of that person there's no such standard here so the majority of their profits have been made in the united states for the last 70 years they continue to do so and what's really particularly irritating is that for instance the national institutes of health which is the government sponsored health agency in the u.s.

has spent $900000000000.00 since the 1930 s. on public research that pharmaceutical companies of them taken patent and and had exclusive rights to it billions of dollars of profits that brings us right into the question of vaccines for code 19 because a lot of the money now is public research money that companies looking to come up with a vaccine maybe looking to put a patent on it actually that could be a cause some consternation and their hats and they have to be bridges here pounds of connection between the research world and government what do you make then of the experts who are advising the u.s. president on this pandemic. well he has an excellent medical team around this no question i know some of those individuals and i know that the group that they're in charge of the scientists the researchers and the doctors are a good group the question is how much he will listen to them and i'm not sure we'll have to find out as we go along he certainly is paying attention now and he's

responding to it but i do see the other day for instance in the u.s. the 1st thing that congress did with the president was pass an $8300000000.00 emergency funding bill now everybody's focused on the end result which is the stuff the spread of the of the virus and that's the right focus that's absolute isolation and this worry about getting over to lower the death rate but i know the pharmacy lobbyists were out of the drug company and what they did in that is they took out 2 causes one would have made any of the research that they were involved with if they left the program then public research they wouldn't have had any intellectual property rights to it they were able to get that excluded there was also another clause that would have given the government some real punitive damages to bring prices down case the eventual price of a vaccine was too expensive for 3rd world and developing countries that also got taken out could be negotiated in the future the problem is what is to go she is future there's more leverage for the pharmaceutical companies so it's interesting for me since i have a microscope on pharma it watches the law sort of you know the little things in

these bills or the big flood of public money to make sure they're protected down the road i want you to take a listen to what health and human services secretary alex zar said on march 5th now he makes predictions on march 5th for the future that is now the president take a listen. it in our testing in the united states has been very has been very consistent if not even more aggressive than some really impacted countries so we are not korea korea is that a very active hot zone outbreak as is northern italy and so we have been ramping up our testing and actually where we will stand in the next week to week and a half in terms of bail ability of testing will place us far ahead far far ahead of similarly impacted major countries around the world so we've actually been progressing with this on par with all of our peer countries in europe for instance cimbali impact to german he says there that today the united states should be far

ahead far far ahead of some really impacted major countries around the world is the united states there. absolutely not brand i wish it were so if those words were accurate it would be fantastic and it's misleading in the sense south korea perfect example they learned a lesson from 2015 when the murders out took place are related sir viral cousin to the current code. and when they had $38.00 deaths their economy and was one into recession they decided afterwards they were going to do something about it they passed regulations that allowed them to super fast testing when china reported the 1st cases of coronavirus they took a kit from the world health organization they did in south korea and they prepared 121-0000 test a day they also passed some measures of intrusion into privacy that many of us western europe in the united states would not accept they went into the cell phone records of those who were found to be positive for the virus and also to their credit card so they put online where those people and binned him put their names

where they put it they went to the cinema where they sat if they'd been to a restaurant so you would know as a not infected person whether back you might have a risk as a result they did a quarter 1000000 tests they kept their infection rate very low and their death rate is $29.00 compared italy 6 so south korea is the model if you look at testing to decide the price through. and you know you mentioned vaccines the 1st human trials for a coronavirus vaccine began yesterday in the united states in the u.s. has earmarked funding to expedite research into a vaccine public money for public health you would think but does that guarantee that this vaccine will be free for everyone once it's ready. you know i found that after 5 years of working on the. pharmaceutical industry the one where that almost never comes into play is the word free doesn't fit into almost any aspect of it they're always at least recovering cost and on top of cost they put some research development that it would take $6900.00 the approval for the 1st time to

a vaccine that was 46 years after a bowl of 1st appeared the democratic republic of the congo that's how long it took to get what we still have a vaccine after some 30 years for aids coming on the early 40 years for hiv and aids so everybody's assuming they can immediately master the vaccine get the viruses spread as they have to throughout figure out the virus strain get right to market that's the best case scenario but i assure you that when it comes whether it's a year and a half or 2 years from now the pharmaceutical company that's 1st in line will be looking to recruit a small profit as they describe it we've got about a minute left i just want to ask you you know you've talked to watts of people in the forms who took industry but you also see what's happening on capitol hill how do you explain the democrats allowing this stimulus package to be passed and there not to be any type of price restrictions i mean where is the risk the resistance or the public outcry here. i think that an election year changes the

calculus a lot and so no party neither party wants to be in a position when november comes there for the presidential election when the other side could run ads that says this is the party that at the critical moment when the country was facing a pandemic decided to vote against this it is packaged and put your health at risk because that souths cast so everybody is gritting their teeth up there on both sides of the aisle and doing what they always do in congress and the presidency throw a lot of money at it and hope some are along the line fixes the problem we'll have to wait and see yeah well definitely have to wait and see that's true joe postman joining us tonight from miami jeff we appreciate your insights valuable stuff tonight thank you thank you frank. well today irish people all over the world to celebrate st patrick's day on march 17th but this year the traditional parades have been called off because of the coronavirus snow that has not dampened the mood in ireland communities and families have been marking the occasion with social distancing moves being respected thank you very much with the luck of the irish and

some creativity virtual parades have popped up all over the country online for everyone to see a nation keeping its system from each other but still coming together happy st patrick's day everybody. you know the month. one invites that. you. know. if you the wrong thing you think. i could you know are you ready. and we wonder are they kissed the blarney stone or is that bad for the outbreak we don't know where they

is always done the conversation continues online you find it on twitter news or you can follow me of brett goff t.v. don't forget to use the hash tag today to remember whatever happens between now and then tomorrow is another day we'll see that everybody states they stay healthy.

the truth. of the markets was. the momentum of the working world. this magazine made in germany. next on. news stream it murder displaced. nearly a 1000000 ringa have fled their homes in myanmar and most are now trapped in neighboring bangladesh. business plans especially claims england and if so who was responsible for. the documentary looking for

answers. in 45 minutes long believe. beethoven piece for me. is for you. beethoven as for helen. beethoven is for her. beethoven is for the. beethoven is for. is for. beethoven 202250th anniversary year on do you.

is it the end of the global economic system as we know it every day you braff the economic data confirm our worst fears the coronavirus has brought financial markets today needs companies a reeling consumers panicking everyone is under suspicion all countries are in lockdown at the borders of fish.