The World Health Organization characterised the outbreak of Covid-19 as a pandemic, with cases confirmed in more than 110 countries and sustained community transmission in several regions outside China.
Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the word should not be used lightly but that the agency was deeply concerned by the levels of spread and inaction. Italy had already placed its entire population under movement restrictions, and financial markets recorded some of their steepest single-day falls in decades.
Within a fortnight roughly a third of the world's population was under some form of stay-at-home order, closing schools, borders and workplaces on a scale without modern precedent.
