Ireland hopes to lift or tweak restrictive measures in a fortnight, Health Minister Simon Harris said.
This will only be possible if the country can slow the rate of admissions to intensive care units, however.
Ireland’s prime minister ordered citizens on Friday to stay home until April 12, with people only allowed to leave to shop for groceries, for brief individual physical exercise or to make essential family visits.
Ireland reported 14 deaths on Saturday, the most on a single day. The death toll has reached 36. A further 294 cases brought the number of infections to 2,415, slightly down on the 302 new cases reported on Friday.
The British government has chartered three more flights to bring Britons trapped in Peru back to the UK, the British Ambassador has announced.
The flights are set to leave Lima on Sunday and Monday, and are being operated by British Airways, ambassador Kate Harrisson said in a video posted on Twitter.
The government are also bringing in flights from other regions to connect to those flights out of Lima, and are organising bus routes across the country which will begin tomorrow morning.
To reach more remote destinations, the government is working with international partners to bring British nationals, along with other nationals, back to Lima, Europe, or the UK.
Harrisson said that coronavirus cases have been confirmed in hostels where UK nationals are staying. She said consulate staff are providing those nationals with support.
There are around 1,000 British nationals in Peru at the moment, Harrisson said. On Wednesday, the government brought around 200 Britons back from Peru.
Trump contacted UK prime minister Boris Johnson last night, who apparently said “the UK needs ventilators” as soon as Trump picked up the phone.
Trump was speaking outside the US naval hospital ship Comfort, which will now head to New York to treat patients suffering from emergency conditions other than coronavirus, to free up healthcare workers and resources to treat the virus.
All non-essential workers must stay home over the next two weeks, in an attempt to stem the spread of coronavirus, the Spanish prime minister has announced.
They will be paid a full salary, PM Pedro Sanchez says.
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Trump is speaking now, and confirms he is considering a quarantine in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.
Trump says he’ll announce either way soon, but says this won’t apply to truckers, and won’t affect trade.
He also says that four hospitals have been completed in “record time”.
He adds that reserves are being activated to boost healthcare supplies. Using his catchphrase, he says he has “millions and millions” of new supplies in process.
Iran has allocated 20% of its annual state budget to fighting the coronavirus outbreak in the country, President Hassan Rouhani said.
Iran is one of the worst-hit countries in the world, with the death toll from coronavirus rising to 2,517 on Saturday.
It had 139 fatalities in the past 24 hours, and cases rose by 3,076 to 35,408.
“We are in difficult conditions, in conditions of sanctions but we have allocated 20% of our budget this year to corona ... and this might be surprising for the world from a country under sanctions,” Rouhani told state TV.
The budget allocation, amounting to about 1,000tn rials, would include grants and low-interest loans to those affected by Covid-19, Rouhani said.
France has ordered 1bn face masks, mostly from China, the French health minister has said.
Health Minister Olivier Veran said the country was using 40 million face masks each week, and currently has three weeks worth of supplies.
Here’s some more information from my colleague Lorenzo Tondo in Italy, on the announcement that the Italian death toll has now passed 10,000:
The number of deaths from coronavirus in Italy has passed 10,000 while the number of total cases is now over 90,000.
On Saturday, Italy announced 889 new deaths from Covid-19, as total fatalities leapt to 10,023. Another 5,974 have tested positive with coronavirus, 470 less than Friday.
Some 70,065 people across the country are currently infected with Covid-19.
The total number of contagions in Italy, including the deceased and those who have recovered, is 92,472.
Yesterday, the country recorded its highest daily rise in Covid-19 deaths, with 969 new fatalities.
On 31 March, flags will be flown at half-mast in cities across Italy to commemorate the victims of the pandemic.
Italy’s prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, warned on Saturday that the EU could lose its purpose if it failed to come up with a strong response to the coronavirus threat and accused other member states of a timid response to an unprecedented economic shock.
“If Europe does not rise to this unprecedented challenge, the whole European structure loses its raison d’être to the people,” Conte told the Il Sole 24 Ore financial newspaper.
“We are at a critical point in European history,” Conte added, “I represent a country that is suffering a lot and I cannot afford to procrastinate.”
The national government is said to be considering plans to extend a country-wide lockdown to mid-April.
The Higher Health Institute (ISS) said that the peak of the coronavirus epidemic in Italy was approaching.
“We have seen an apparent reduction in the infection curve since 20 March but we are not yet in a downward phase,” said ISS president Silvio Brusaferro.
The EU has granted Tunisia €250m in aid to help it cope with the economic and social effects of the coronavirus outbreak, EU ambassador Patrice Bergamini said in a tweet.
Tunisia has limited healthcare infrastructure, leading to concerns about the spread of coronavirus.
Currently, the country has 227 confirmed Covid-19 cases and six deaths.
In Italy, 10,023 people have now died from coronavirus, after rising by 889 since Friday.
The number of confirmed cases in the country increased to 92,472 from 86,498.
