Italian educational institutions close as Covid-19 deaths pass 100 – as it happened

The markets bounce is continuing in Tokyo where the Nikkei is up 1.1% on Thursday morning. That’s not quite the bounce that we saw on Wall Street where the Dow surged 4.53%, the S&P 500 gained 4.22% and the Nasdaq rose 3.85%. But it will give investorts some cheer.

That’s it for the day on this blog but you can follow what happens with the virus story and the markets with a new blog that my colleague Helen Sullivan has just launched to take us through the next 24 hours or so. You can read that here:

Still with the airline industry and Reuters reports that Donald Trump met executives from some of America’s leading airlines to discuss the coronavirus outbreak.

The airline bosses told the president they have stepped up procedures to keep planes “clean and disinfected” amid concerns about the the spread of the virus.

Executives from Southwest Airlines, United Airlines, American Airlines and JetBlue, among others, attended the meeting at the White House with Trump, vice president Mike Pence and other officials.

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Trump said airlines would be affected by the fall in international travel related to the virus.

“It’s affecting the airline business, as it would. And a lot of people are staying in our country and they’re shopping and using our hotels in this country, so from that standpoint I think probably there’s a positive impact, but there’s also an impact on overseas travel which will be fairly substantial,” Trump said.

The airline executives said the industry was taking measures to intensify aircraft sanitation.

“We’ve stepped up our efforts to make sure the airplanes are clean and disinfected,” said Southwest Airlines boss Gary Kelly.

The struggling airline Flybe is set to collapse within hours, according to the Press Association.

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We reported earlier that the regional carrier, which narrowly avoided going bust in January, was on the brink of bankruptcy again thanks to a drop in demand caused by the coronavirus.

But an airline source has told PA that it is expected to enter administration overnight after talks on Wednesday failed to secure a rescue package.

Here’s our story from transport correspondent Gwyn Topham:

Here’s a summary of the most recent developments:

• It was confirmed that two more people had died in the USA, bringing the total there to 11. They included the first person from outside Washington state to die, as well as another person within Washington.
• There was further deaths and cases in other nations across the world. Local authorities in Iraq said two people had died. In Stockholm, officials said 16 new cases had been identified, taking the Swedish total to 52 and Algerian authorities said 16 members of the same family had now tested positive. Other nations, including Slovenia and Hungary, identified their first cases.
• Sporting events in Italy are to be held behind closed doors for a month, the local government ordered. The events will include England’s Six Nations match against Italy and a host of Serie A games. All events inside the “red zone” are cancelled altogether.
• Two recent patients at Kings College hospital, in south London, tested positive. The hospital was not allowing visitors on to the wards where the patients were being treated, the Guardian understands.
• A British woman was among two more confirmed cases in Senegal, local authorities said. The nation’s health ministry identified her as a 33-year-old from London who arrived in Senegal on 24 February.
• A family of four in Ireland tested positive, bringing the number of confirmed cases on the island to nine. They included six cases in the Republic of Ireland and three in Northern Ireland.

You can read a summary of the day’s earlier news here.

A tourist in Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory has tested positive for coronavirus. It is the first confirmed case in the territory, which contains hundreds of remote communities.

The 52-year-old man carrying the virus is in isolation in Royal Darwin Hospital.

The man recently arrived in Darwin from Sydney and has had limited contact with the local community, NT Health said in a statement.

The department was undertaking contact tracing and would reach out to those who may have been in contact with the man, the statement said.

Stock markets have continued to rally at the opening of Thursday’s trrading session in Asia Pacific.

The Australian benchmark ASX200 index is up almost 2% this morning after losing more than 10% from its all-time highs in the past 10 days.

All sectors were up but tech shares led the way with a rise of 3%. and follows a strong shjowing on Wall Street in Wednesday’s session.

Michael McCarthy of CMC Markets in Sydney said a number of factors were behind the big lift and that it was not just theresult of the US Fed’s rate cut on Tuesday.

A Congressional spending package, the rise of Joe Biden and stronger than forecast data lifted US optimism and sent stocks soaring. Major share indices leapt 4% overnight. Bonds sold off, gold prices eased and industrial commodities lifted. The US dollar rose against the yen and euro, but commodity currencies lifted further. Asia Pacific futures markets indicate the optimism will flow into today’s trading.

Saudi Arabia has identified a new case, its health ministry has announced in a statement published by the state news agency.

The kingdom said the person in question was travelling with another already known to have been infected and that both had come from Iran via Bahrain; a fact the second person had not initially disclosed.

The ministry confirmed the new case is quarantined in hospital and that everyone who interacted with him has been tested, though no results have yet been obtained.

Kings College hospital has confirmed that two recent patients have tested positive. A spokesman for the south London hospital has said:

The trust has had two recent patients who have tested positive for Covid-19. We have strict protocols in place to manage the control of infection and to reduce the possibility of cross-infection, and this includes restricting access for staff and visitors to the ward.

Public Health England experts are carrying out contact tracing and will be in touch with individuals who may have been exposed to the virus to provide them with advice.

For anyone who has symptoms of coronavirus, call 111 or visit here as the first port of call.

The two patients at Kings College hospital are among the 87 already confirmed cases in the UK – not additional to them.

A generally available coronavirus vaccine is unlikely to be available within the next 12 months, the UK government’s chief scientific adviser has said. Discussing the timeframe and feasibility of making such available to everyone in the country on this evening’s edition of ITV’s Peston programme, Sir Patrick Vallance says:

I think a vaccine that can be used generally, we’d be very lucky to get one within a year ... Clearly, what you’d tend to do with a vaccine if you’ve got an effective vaccine – and there’s a whole question about how much of it you can manufacture and how much you can make available – but what you tend to do is protect the most vulnerable first and then grow it as you need to. And the same principle’s taken with influenza vaccination.

Asked if he feels it’s time to move from the containment phase to the delay phase on managing the spread, Vallance says:

This is clearly a global thing, it’s not unique to the UK and, therefore, part of this is when the World Health Organisation decides that it moved from contain to delay because that should ideally be a global response.

Failing that, we’re keeping an eye on when we think we do reach that stage and we’ll make that decision, ideally with other countries as well.

As we reported earlier, Vallance is due to advise UK government minsters on their response on Thursday.

Peston is due to air at 10.45pm GMT and is broadcast live on Twitter shortly beforehand.

The US House of Representatives has approved an $8.3bn (£7.3bn) funding bill to combat the spread of coronavirus, sending the emergency legislation to the Senate.

The measure, which passed by 415 votes to two, funds a series of US government-sponsored initiatives, including expanded testing for the virus that has infected at least 129 people in the nation.

The Senate is expected to take up the bill quickly and send it to the US president, Donald Trump, to be signed into law this week.