India‘s 1.3 billion people have joined the global lockdown triggered by the coronavirus, as the World Health Organization (WHO) expressed concern at the acceleration of the pandemic in the United States and Italy recorded another large increase in deaths from COVID-19.
India’s “total lockdown” began at midnight (18:30 GMT on Tuesday) and will continue for 21 days.
In Italy, where more people have died than anywhere else in the world, the death toll rose to 6,820.
The WHO has warned the United States, the country with the most cases after China and Italy, risked becoming the next epicentre of the outbreak as the country’s President Donald Trump, insisted the country could be back to work in three weeks.
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More than 18,600 people have died from COVID-19 since it first emerged in China late last year.
Nearly 108,000 of the 418,000 people diagnosed with the disease have recovered, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University.
I’m Kate Mayberry with Al Jazeera’s continuing coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.
Here are the latest updates:
Wednesday, March 25
02:15 GMT – ‘Bunker down’: New Zealand declares state of emergency
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has declared a state of national emergency as the country prepared to go into a month-long lockdown at midnight (11:00 GMT).
The country has 205 cases, but Ardern says modelling suggests there could actually be thousands.
All non-essential services, schools and offices will be shut and people told to stay at home.
“Make no mistake this will get worse before it gets better,” Ardern told parliament. “We will have a lag and cases will increase for the next week or so. Then we’ll begin to know how successful we have been.”
01:55 GMT – Australia tightens restrictions, worries about intensive care needs
Australia has further tightened restrictions on movement, including limiting the number of people allowed at a wedding to five and those attending a funeral to ten.
Officials are concerned that if the number of cases continues to rise (there are now more than 2,250 confirmed cases) intensive care will be overwhelmed.
01:30 GMT – Xi Jinping to attend G20 video summit
Chinese President Xi Jinping will take part in the virtual G20 summit on the coronavirus that is due to take place on Thursday.
President Xi Jinping will attend a special G20 leaders’ summit on responding to the #COVID19 pandemic Thursday in Beijing, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson announced Wednesday. The video summit will be hosted by Saudi Arabia, the G20 Presidency in 2020. pic.twitter.com/J67yrALqow
— People’s Daily, China (@PDChina) March 25, 2020
00:40 GMT – South Korea to step up screening of arrivals from US
South Korea plans to step up screening procedures for people arriving in the country from the US, Yonhap news agency reported on Wednesday.
The new measures will come into effect no later than midnight on Friday (15:00 GMT).
People arriving from Europe are already required to be tested and to complete two weeks of self-isolation.
00:30 GMT – China reports 47 more cases in people coming from overseas
China continues to report more cases in people returning to the country from overseas.
It now has a total of 474 such cases with an increase of 47 at the end of Tuesday.
The Foreign Ministry says most of the cases involve foreign nationals, but anyone arriving from overseas is required to go into centralised quarantine for 14 days.
For all the updates from yesterday (March 24) click here.
SOURCE: Al Jazeera and news agencies