Coronavirus news: New Zealand announces lockdown; Hong Kong bars entry to all non-residents – live updates | World news

The British government is effectively nationalising the state’s railways for a temporary period, it has been announced.

Rail franchise agreements are to be suspended to avoid train companies collapsing due to the coronavirus, the Department for Transport (DfT) has announced.

Operators will be paid a small management fee to run services, with all revenue and cost risk transferred to the Government.

The emergency measures will be in place for an initial period of six months. Rail timetables have been slashed because of Covid-19.

The DfT said passenger numbers have fallen by up to 70%, while ticket sales are down by two-thirds.

The move is coming as no surprise to critics of Britain’s highly privatised model, and many expect there will be no return.

The minister for transport tweets:

Among those who have died from coronavirus in the UK is a primary school teacher who was admitted to hospital with symptoms.

Wendy Jacobs, the headteacher of Roose Community Primary School was being cared for at Furness General Hospital, according to local reports.

The school’s board of governors said in a statement: “This is devastating news for our school and nursery community and all our thoughts and sympathies are with her family.”

This compilation of Italian mayors laying down the law in some particularly inimitable ways to those transgressing rules on staying at home is worth a watch.

In Germany, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany has risen to 22,672 and 86 people have died from the disease, according to a tally released on Monday by the public health agency, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI).

That compares with 18,610 cases and 55 deaths on Sunday, when RKI warned that the actual number was likely higher as not all local health authorities had submitted their figures over the weekend.

Also in eastern Europe, Poland has said today that it cannot rule out imposing further constraints on citizens to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

Poland has shuttered schools, cinemas and theatres, while limiting public gatherings to no more than 50 people. It has also closed its borders to foreigners and introduced a “state of epidemic”, recommending its citizens to stay at home.

But government spokesman Piotr Muller told public radio in Poland today: “The government is considering various options regarding the epidemic situation, including launching other limitations than up to date.”

In developments to come this week in Europe, Hungary’s parliament will consider an emergency bill that would give prime minister Viktor Orbán sweeping powers to rule by decree, without a clear cut-off date.

The Guardian’s Shaun Walker reports that the bill seeks to extend the state of emergency declared earlier this month over coronavirus, and could also see people jailed for spreading information deemed to be fake news.

The government has portrayed the move as a necessary response to the unprecedented challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic, but critics immediately labelled the legislation as dangerously open-ended and vulnerable to abuse.

Authorities in Hong Kong have said that they will ban all tourists to the city from Wednesday.

That’s breaking now on Reuters, which adds that people coming from Taiwan and Macau will also need to be quarantined.

A senior British doctor has warned that the rate of increase in Covid-19 patients who will need critical care is at the alarming end of the spectrum.

“The fear is that we are going to be working in very different ways than we have been. We are used to working in a controlled environment, with dedicated staff,” said Ganesh Suntharalingam, President of the Intensive Care Society, which is the largest multi-professional critical care membership organisation in the UK.

We will remain in control but we are going to have to expand to a very high degree. this is more than just putting intensive care beds in wards,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“This is about moving to a different order of magnitude where we will have to provide essential care for as many people as possible using every resources that we have.”

Britain was not yet in the position were decisions will have to be made about who will get particular care and who will not due to limited resources, he said, but a stage may come where a very broad discussion will have to be made, involving society.

UK hospitals are in urgent need of ventilators and are approaching full capacity because of the Covid-19 outbreak, which will increasingly force doctors to make tough decisions about which patients to treat, according to the trade union body for British doctors and medical students.

The comments by British Medical Association spokesman and consultant anaesthetist Tom Dolphin come as senior staff at a London hospital told the Guardian they expect beds in its intensive care unit to be full by 30 March, with one source describing its A&E unit as “like a war zone”.

Dolphin, who works at Imperial College London, said some hospitals in London, such as Northwick Park, which was forced to declare a “critical incident” last week after running out of critical care beds, are already struggling with the number of patients.

“Like any epidemic, there are hotspots. Some hospitals have had to transfer patients out to other intensive care units,” he told PA Media, adding: “We’re going to get to the point where we are running out of capacity and that transfer ability is going to be difficult to do anyway because nowhere else will have anywhere either.”

That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, for today. I will now be leaving you in the washed and capable hands of colleague Ben Quinn.

People are venting their frustration after airline Emirates announced it would suspend all flights for two weeks in response to the United Arab Emirates’ decision to suspend all inbound and outbound passenger flights and the transit of airline passengers.