UK closes down

The British government has announced strict controls on movement, telling people to stay at home in a lockdown that will be enforced by the police.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the plan in a rare televised address to the nation, after an additional 52 people in the country died from the virus.

"From this evening, I must give the British people a very simple instruction, you must stay at home," he said.

The British move follows the imposition of strict lockdowns in France, Spain, and Italy, and slightly looser restrictions elsewhere, as Europe reels from a pandemic that the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned is accelerating.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Monday noted that while it took 67 days for cases to reach the 100,000 mark globally, it took only 11 for cases to reach 200,000 and just four to reach 300,000.

More than 6,000 Italians have now died from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, nearly double the confirmed number of deaths in China where the virus first emerged late last year.

In the United States, the number of cases surged past 35,000, as the death toll rose to 495.

Nearly 16,500 people have died from COVID-19 about the world, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University. Nearly 101,000 of the 379,000 people who have been diagnosed with the disease have recovered.

Dhaka/Mukul