this is g. w. here's a live from berlin india's population of 1300000000 begins a 3 week lockdown to combat the coronavirus the streets of the capital delhi are deserted as people stay behind closed doors prime minister narendra modi warns that without the lockdown the country could be set back to 2 decades also coming up german lawmakers approved a historic relief package to cushion the blow from the outbreak the aid is aimed at

supporting health care and propping up businesses hit hard by the pandemic the country's finance minister is warning cards we fly and russian president vladimir putin postpones a nationwide vote that would allow him to extend his rule he says it's because of the pentameter. i'm sorry kelly walk into the program india has become the latest and the largest country to introduce a nationwide lockdown in the fight against the coronavirus there's only been about 560 confirmed cases and 11 deaths in india but there are fears of the infection could spread quickly in its densely populated cities. they look like the streets of a quiet village but these are the roads of india's capital delhi on the 1st day of

the coronavirus lockdown one spot celing bollywood film sets are empty. airlines are grounded travel restricted indians have been warned to take a 3 week stay at home order seriously it is then if these 21 days are not managed properly then the country and your family will be set back by 21 years is a lot that. crowds formed at pharmacies and shops following the prime minister's announcement safeguarding its supplies india has now banned exports of mosques and ventilators as well as an anti malaria drug being tested as a covert 19 treatment health experts say the drastic measures are necessary. if india can fight this together for 2 weeks we definitely would have prevented

that from going up and may get flak all that we need to do is to prevent that god from going that leaving because if that happens in india the results will be much worse than what happened in the. economic relief has been promised to those unable to work but many remain worried. present that i cannot wait to find out if the government will give me money but how am i supposed to eat until then and what if they don't. with indians housebound about one 3rd of the world's population is now living under some form of lockdown. and other countries in asia are taking steps to curb the spread of the corona virus for correspondents from port now on what is happening in their parts of the world. over the last 2 weeks have been focused on the number of pieces have been rising

steadily from 32000 on wednesday prime minister imran khan has been reluctant to impose down but it hasn't prevented from government to go ahead but that the army has been deployed and beginning to see the impact of the ball thrown in the. reported figures. the prime minister. has diminished. to minimise the impact of the last known. meeting to be. a stimulus package or just beyond exporters the coronavirus situation number one the sun is getting worse by the day currently there are these 74 people suffering from the illness and as much as the government's trying to address the pandemic they say they're facing many challenges along the way for one millions of people in the nation rely on daily wage just to get by which makes shutting down major cities nearly impossible secondly the government is saying that people aren't doing enough

to socially distance themselves from one another and most importantly i want to hear is a large land border with you know one of the most heavily affected nations in the world in terms of the coronavirus the philippines has reported a relatively no number of good 19 cases so far but this number is expected to increase in the coming days as more testing is scheduled on the science that you see here out on the streets is in direct contrast to the uproar that is now on social media that is into their keyboards demanding last testing after they found out through these reports that legislators had been mine and had gotten tested ahead of everybody else this. by the limited number of testing kits in the country malaysia stepping up coronavirus testing the country can currently do about 7000 tests per day but the ministry of health says by the middle next week that number will climb to more than $16000.00 but health officials warn that if there is

a major surge in cases there will not be enough ventilators the army and police have set up checkpoints to force the nationwide restrictions on movement people are only allowed to go outside for necessities and only one person for house for the supposed to go pharmacies are taking customers temperatures before letting them inside even spraying their hands with sanitizer the majority of coronavirus cases in malaysia have been linked to religious gathering that was held last month. and that was the view from asia now here are some more developments some of the latest developments in the coronavirus pandemic prince charles the heir to the british throne has tested positive for corona virus buckingham palace says that he has mild symptoms spain has seen another surge and its death toll with more than 3400 deaths spain has now passed china in the number of known coronavirus fatalities and is 2nd only to italy and libya has announced its 1st confirmed infection control in the outbreak in the country will be particularly challenging as 2 rival groupings vie full to little controls. and just

a short while ago the parliament passed an unprecedented rescue package to mitigate the economic impact of the outbreak in germany lawmakers who are sticking to strict social distancing rules voted to suspend a constitutional restriction on how much debt the government can raise the legislation would increase borrowing this year by over 150000000000 euros the last time the german government took on new debt was back in 2013. more from political correspondent on your kohler so i mean why is this vote so important. it is the biggest relief package that the german. the german government has set up and this at a very early stage in the crisis the lawmakers vote on several separate bills but the most important one was just passed the bundestag has approved of

a supplementary budget of $156000000000.00 euros and in order to do so they also vote on the suspension of germany's so-called that break which usually only allows borrowing that borrowing of 0.35 percent of gross domestic product the bill was widely accepted not only by members of the grand coalition but also by major parts of the opposition and the coronavirus also had an impact not only on the voting of this package but but also on the procedures during today's session. that's right sara there were strict rules are to keep the distance in the parliamentary chamber. 2 seats had to be had to be kept empty between the lawmen and between the lawmakers. in which the ballots have to be thrown were

removed from the chamber so the parliamentary and had to get out of the chamber for every single vote the most obvious though was that chancellor merkel was missing she's under quarantine since her doctor tested positive for the corona virus vice-chancellor all of charlotte spoken her behalf and he passed on her regards from home and it was a very very speedy procedure usually. what was passed today takes weeks or months and today they managed it in one single day how successful has germany been when it comes to flattening out the infection curve so far. this is not so clear yet we see an increase in confirmed infection numbers 33200 naira as of today and more than 160 fatal cases on monday the president of germany's disease control agency.

expressed hopes that the curve might be flattening slightly but in today's briefing he said that it's still too early to tell he's cautiously optimistic that the measures taken but they are successful but he warns that we can't leave off. at this point because he said we are still at an early stage into the epidemic the virus only started to spread in germany so we have to keep keep up the implemented measure this and in the meantime we are all certainly social distancing on your call there are political correspondent thank you. well the boost to given to world stocks by a massive us emergency funding package appears to have worn off wall street is

trading down despite congress agreeing on measures worth almost 2 trillion dollars anticipation of the deal led to a record breaking day on wall street on tuesday with the dow jones seeing its biggest one day rise since the 1933 asian shares followed suit on wednesday making their 1st back to back games in months japan's nikkei ended the day up 8 percent but european stocks are struggling to stay positive as the initial excitement over the u.s. government's announcement subsides for. and russia's president vladimir putin has postponed a planned nationwide vote on constitutional changes aimed at extending his time in office in his 1st televised speech since the cold in 1000 coronaviruses. break putin said that the delay was due to the worsening situation official figures suggest that russia has so far avoided large numbers of infections but those figures have risen sharply in recent days.

sure when is following the story for us from moscow so the delay of this vote and really what message is putin sending well the delay of this vote absolutely sends the message that this coronavirus crisis is to be taken very seriously after all this vote on constitutional amendments is important for russia and it's particularly important for vladimir putin himself because it could mean that he is term as president could be prolonged by as many as much as 12 years he could stay in power for 20 intil 2036 if the amendments are passed so people are kind of waiting to see when he would postpone postpone this vote which was scheduled for april 2022nd. over the pandemic what other points that he make in his speech.

well he called on people to work together he said that it was everyone's personal responsibility to stop the spread of the coronavirus he also instituted a work free week because he said for next week so people here in russia across the country will be on paid leave he urged people to stay at home to stop the spread of the virus and he also talked about a huge a broad economic support package which is supposed to support families with young children small businesses people who are unemployed and that seems to show that the government here is taking the concerns of the people here rather seriously people are worried about how this crisis and the falling oil prices as well could hit the economy here in russia emily let's talk a little bit more about the situation in russia because compared to other countries the coronavirus case counted russia is quite low why is that

well that's been essentially the question on everyone's lips here as well and many people that i've been talking to in recent weeks and in recent months have said there's no way that russia really has such a low number of cases which at the moment is still in the hundreds it is steadily rising every day and people here don't really trust official statistics even though the government has assured the public that they will be absolutely open about this crisis that we don't actually know why the numbers are so low but one possible explanation is that testing could be the reason and in fact moscow's mayor in a talk yesterday with putin said said as much and that's because some of the tests have been not sensitive enough potentially and there have been bureaucratic hurdles as well so they we are likely to see a surge potentially in russia of cases as they expand testing. only sure when in

moscow thank you. this is news don't forget there is full coverage of the coronavirus crisis on our website that's at d w dot com i'm sara kelly in berlin we will have another update for you at the top of the hour i hope to see you then in the meantime thank you so much for joining us . life has been suspended and the country has gone into lockdown closing bars and restaurants and now most flights to and from kinshasa are battened in this covert $900.00 special we're looking at how african countries are preparing for the upcoming challenge on their already vulnerable health care systems. thanks for joining us corona virus is sweeping across africa but the true number of cases is unknown as mass testing has not yet been rolled out here's some of the latest information we have for you the number of confirmed cases in africa shot

past the 2000 mark on wednesday now the majority of the continent's 54 countries have registered infections ivory coast and senegal have both declared states of emergency and south africa will begin a lockdown starting thursday. joining us from abroad seville in the republic of congo is michel yeah he's the program manager for emergency response at the world health organization in africa also here is edwards he's a professor and immunologists at reading university welcome to you both michelle i'll start with you what sort of advisory has the w h o given africa if any. the advisory in fact he went through a different step the 1st step is for iran the containment face is. to prevent local transmission on as much as possible so this helps

to detect they initiate cases now that we have a serious inc or local transmission on it we have it in more than 15 countries in africa now the next step is how to scale up quickly to be able to contain the. situation and also to start preparing for me to guess on face guess on phase is an equivalent to a wide community spread that con is a layer of ice trash they had this is like what we are seeing now in your european countries now biologists are also predicting that african countries fell experienced their peak number of infections this summer now how prepared would you say the continent is he spoke of upscaling the capacities michel.

i would say that's the 1st step culture respect from quite well by detecting they put out the cases that's where important to not freak out but 5 a nest is where we need to mobilize maw and we need more at fault we need more support in most of the african countries because it is a step that they will have to deal with and out of people needing intensive have in their system in many african and for fossett it is you don't have such capacity so they need to think about how to scale up with from temporary treatment such as how to get assessed or are suggesting provide also rescued out to the mice in how to get access to protective equipment so at this level countries are less prepared because they are locking the ressources most of them have the follow up of

preparedness and response plan but the supplies for example is one of the major challenge to fulfill the spot that is utterly gente because we are moving to are they wide contamination in many countries already now michelle spoke at there of the white contamination do you alice see the crisis in africa reaching a similar level to what we're seeing here in europe how would that look like. i think i think you know that's that's what we've you know i've been thinking about exactly that since way back you know when we were hearing about the outbreak 1st of all in we han in china i think one positive is i think the much work has gone on to try and expand for example diagnostic testing services across africa and we've learned a great deal from programs to tackle big infection has such as hiv and malaria so

for example simple rapid testing technology is now relatively quick and appropriate to drawl out so we have these sorts of tests here which can be done without in the burra 3 they're not perfect but they're very easy to scale out what i'm hoping is that what we've learnt from those kinds of activities those kinds of public health activities will help to deal with early identification and early containment in these states but it is a huge problem given that we can't contain outbreaks very effectively in europe i think will be the same in any other country across the world now testing of course 8 important part of the response to the corona virus michel would you say that people are taking the gravity of the situation they are in africa seriously. i think most of the. national party to is taking it seriously if we look at

all the states often meant to n.c. declare is on that we will start to recall in many african countries that up taking in serious you nest is really for they hold population on and i'm not sure that they have. this level of it well ness as well as. taking that seriously in most of the african communities there is a lot of room us going to run including men's fault for treats men so there is they work to be done and from what we learn from a born out it is that when it does need to be fully on board and for that they need to have the appropriate information to increase awareness but they need to be fully engaged for them to play it all if we have a community wide transformation is the community behavior that we in part on they way they desist will spread. within this community and i think learning from

hero is time now to take some of the measures for public affairs we for food and gage went off the community to listen or down the spread and objective is to flatten the. big that's we'll. take control we've they exist incapacities thank you very much michel yeah he's the program manager for emergency response at the world health organization and africa also here is al edwards he is a professor and immunologists at reading university thank you both. now around the world celebrities have inundated us with their song and dance numbers often from home and with mixed reception but ugandan musician turned politician bobby wine has seen his own take widely shared it's a music video reminding everyone about how to purge the spread of the coronavirus

wash your hands and keep your distance have a listen. thanks. for. everybody. right. there but we're now joined by our correspondent joy during beer out she's standing by for us in nairobi kenya joy we just listened to bobby winds our rap slash public service message there for us what sort of

a role do pop culture and social media have in getting the word out. a lot actually because when you look at the african demographics at the moment a big population happen to fall between the ages of 35 going down and this major concern for most of people right now are focusing or making sure that the young people get the message because the older generation at the moment does not have access to technology on a large scale and they are or happen to be the most vulnerable demographic when it comes to the spread of the coronavirus or covert 19 so social media and pop culture is playing a humongous role in spreading the message to last of the young people on the african continent and in kenya and uganda as well particularly so young people acting as multipliers of the message there now that message itself it seems quite

simple wash your hands stay home but neither of those things are easy for everyone . indeed access to water is not readily available to millions of people around the african continent and that in itself is a challenge especially in the informal settlements in a lot of areas the rural parts of africa say in kenya today what the government is trying to do is ask the water supplies to be a little bit and weave their customers not shop their bills and also and do not switch off there was a connections in a bid to help people flatten the code of of the coronavirus spread that water will be readily available to the people and that even though they might be having a rear is this still going to be able to wash their hands and maybe take care of

that problem at a later date and also the government has tried as much as possible to go to areas where there's not enough access to order to toast them and also provide water when necessary thank you very much our correspondent a joy there in a beer out there for us in nairobi. and that was our d.w. covert 19 special on africa thank you for watching and will that bobby wine play us out for more check out our social media channels and to now the milan stay healthy everyone. but. thank god i heard. they're going to cut every brick. layer back out above the camel. folks in the town of touch.

with. the markets. the momentum of the working world. business magazine made in germany. next on t w. w's crime fighters are back with africa's most successful radio drama series continues all of us odes are available online and of course you can share and discuss song w. africa's facebook page and other social media platforms for a crime fighter tune in now. every day it's

for us and for our planet. global ideas is on its way to bring you more conservation. how do we make cities screener how can we protect animals and their habitats what to do with the lower waste. we can make a difference by choosing reforestation over deforestation recycling or disposable smart new solutions overseen sending our waste earth is truly unique and we know that the uniqueness is why. allows us to live and survive good why do you assume the environmental issues including 3000 on t.w. and on my. list.

these days art is big business this piece of canvas for example went 432-8000 euro.