Showing his appreciation for any chest stuff last night, we now know the prime Minister was already having symptoms of Corona virus.

And this morning it was confirmed.

Hi, facts.

I want to bring you up to speed with something that's happening today, which is that I've developed mild symptoms off the Corona virus.

That's to say, a temperature on dhe, a persistent cough on On the advice of the chief medical officer, I've taken a test that has come out positive.

So I am working from home.

I'm self isolating on dhe.

That's entirely the right thing to do.

But be in no doubt that I can continue our thanks to the Wizard of Modern technology to communicate with all my top team to lead the national fight back against Corona bars.

And he wasn't the only one.

The health secretary, Matt Hancock, seen here just two days ago at Prime Minister's questions, has also tested positive.

I've been working from home over the last couple of days because everybody who can work from home should work from home.

I've also had some mild symptoms of Corona virus on dhe.

Upon medical advice, I was tested that test has been positive, so I'll be self isolating here until next Thursday.

Also with symptoms.

The chief medical officer, Chris Witty.

He hasn't been tested but is self isolating.

But if the message from Downing Street was to keep calm and carry on, one senior figure, Dominic Cummings, didn't help.

The prime minister's spokesman later refused to say what exactly had prompted the hasty exit.

The prime minister there, absent from today's press conference, was the subject of it specifically why he and the health secretary have been tested for the virus when many, including Ki n hs workers, still haven't.

Firstly, that you must have clinical symptoms.

The default position without that is you would not be tested on then.

The only other criteria would be the centrality of your role to the cove it 19 Response on DDE.

In this particular case, I'm sure your viewers will understand that the prime minister plays a very critical role in that on that's the basis for our testing and after days of questions over the availability of testing for those on the front line.

Finally, some movement we will be rolling out staff testing across the N.

H s beginning next week, starting with the critical care nurses, other staff in intensive care emergency departments.

Ambulance service is GPS, and as the testing volumes continue to increase, we want to expand that to a wider range.

Off essential public service workers, including our social care service, is as well as, of course, continuing with the patient testing, which is so vital one Cabinet minister, still not self isolating, use the moment to appeal yet again for caution.

I think that many people were effect on the fact that the prime minister succumbing to the virus is a reminder of how seriously we all need to take the advice that the N hs has been giving us.

As if we needed any more proof that the Corona virus doesn't discriminate.

The latest victim, the prime minister, is self isolating here in Downing Street, not at number 10 but behind me in number 11 where he lives.

The chancellor, who would usually be working here, has led him.

His office door between the two properties has been sealed and food will be left on the doorstep for him so that he can work here for the next seven days.

But although this one high profile case will undoubtedly dominate headlines.

The business of steering the country through this crisis has continued.

The government has strengthened protections for renters, instructing courts to suspend any evictions for 90 days.

The housing market has also effectively been frozen, with buyers and renters urged to delay moving and to protect the homeless.

Local authorities have been told to house everyone sleeping rough in hostels and shelters.

By this weekend, Corona virus has taken hold in Westminster and across the country.

Concern is growing as well.

And so the numbers with confirmed cases now at 14,579 and the death toll at 759 up by 181 in one day.

All of this puts pressure on the government to show that the action they have taken is working on as the person ultimately responsible.

It could be a lonely few days for Boris Johnson.

We're joined now by Jonathan Powell, who was Downing Street chief of staff under Tony there, and you can tell us perhaps I mean how much this is likely to affect the functioning of government with the prime minister in the health secretary of the chief medical advisor, all isolating well.

It is a problem.

Downing Street is a very small place.

So of course lots of people were being affected by this and may well be infected by it on.

It's quite hard to self isolate yourself in a small building like that.

But if the prime minister is not seriously ill, it is possible to continue a business, and he can carry on handling it if he needs to.

I mean that the general scientific predictions.

If you like our that nationally, this is going to keep growing, and so one must assume it will also grow within the government's in Whitehall.

How resilience is the system is pretty resilient because we're not a presidential system.

So unlike the US, we don't have to have a vice president who takes over if the president is shot and then a speaker of the House who take exam graph to that, we have a much more flexible system that the prime minister cancer it.

It usually goes to the next person in line.

So in our case it was John Prescott who is deputy prime minister.

Now it's Dominic Roberts for secretary of state.

After that, they can move it along the normal with presidents at making, also within ministries.

Moved union ministers and move people around.

It's not like people have to be elected to the post like a president.

You get it because you have a majority in the House of Commons.

What what about the ministry's themselves and the officials?

I mean, presumably, they are also suffering the same sorts of absenteeism as everybody else they will be.

But unlike doctors and nurses, it matters a little bit less because they're not frontline staff in terms of going into hospital a potentially giving it to other people S o, they can again be replaced with permanent secretary gets sick, is deputy can take over.

If a head of department gets sick, her deputy can take over.

So get is quite another resilience in our system because it's a parliamentary system because we have a permanent civil service with very large numbers of people and it's obviously be a strain.

But it's perfectly possible to manage.

What have you made of the way decisions have been made over the last couple of guns?

Well, I think it's very difficult criticize the government in the circumstances.

They're trying to do their best on very, very difficult circumstances.

I think when we look back at it, when the inquiry happens, people may say it was a bit late to move because usually my experience in government was, You have to move quickly.

If you have a crisis like this was something like putting math.

Unless you move quickly, you can't cut it off of the parson.

Maybe that's something to be said after event.

But it's easy to criticize after the event, and now everyone has to concentrate are getting this fixed?

We're in very different times internationally, too.

The banking crisis, for example, or 9 11 if I should try to look a sort of big, comparable events, you know?

Do you think there needs to be Maur International coordination?

Or does it Does the evidence suggest countries are reacting to their own individual circumstances on That's right, what?

They are reacting to their own circumstances.

But that's not wise.

This is a global pandemic.

Is no UK pandemic or French pandemic or US pandemic, and it is a shame that we were better prepared for it.

Everyone knew a pandemic was coming would be better if that had been a better global preparation on those better international cooperation.

In the U, for example, there was a committee of work done to prepare for pandemics, but then it fell apart when everyone went there each way.

National.

And that's one of the things after the event we're going to need to look at.

How do we actually cooperate internationally and think about it for a bit?

Because we're in this difficulty, as the UK developed health system really good.

Natural also is, How's it going to be in Mozambique or in Afghanistan?

In countries that a war where people who are hungry, where their immune systems are down, there's gonna be a whole lot more serious in those countries that is with us?

I mean, how do you think the current situation differs?

I mean, what would you have normally expected in terms of world leadership?

Would you be looking to the Americans normally, what you would normally want us to be that the main leader on this, but on Geeta on the the global economic crisis got Brown immediately started working with the Americans on an answer, then expanded its the G 20 and bought everyone in together.

So you need a wide group of people.

For example, if South Asia, this ark, the organization brings together India and Pakistan, Afghanistan or these other countries, they've been working together both leader level level of presidents and prime it does, but also the level of officials and health experts.

That's the kind of cooperation that you want.

If you could possibly guess it.

I mean, we saw Gordon Brown calling for that to happen again.

I mean, it doesn't particularly seem to be happening in light of that.

Is there anything else that should be done or is the government doing pretty much all that candy?

I think again, it's very difficult to criticize the government in the middle of a crisis.

The thing to do is to try and support them.

But I think when we look back at it when there is an inquiry in front herbs, lookit, I think the main thing is I say we'll be moving fast.

If you can cut these things off early, you know, I remember back in putting math we had moved a week earlier, we might have been able to have the elections when we'd hoped to have the elections.

Instead, we have to put them off because we haven't moved fast enough.

So I think that issue of speed on being taken seriously and most of all having very clear message is having messages that people can clearly understand clearly cooperated.

You have mixed messages.

It gets very, very, very messy.

And that's why I wish you to.

Michael's very well indeed, because he's actually being out there.

We were very clear message Amber's and empathy reassurance.

But what you don't want to do is give people fear.

The leadership has to demonstrate that they got this under control, that they have a plan that it can be told Jonathan now, thank you very much.

Well, Downing Street has insisted the government is doing everything it can to secure new ventilators for the N.

H s in the coming weeks.

Although there are no details on whether manufacturers have yet been able to switch.

Production guidelines for health workers across England are also due to change, instructing them to wear protective equipment.

That's if enough supplies are made available, Paul McNamara reports.

Full face buys is mosques, full gowns and gloves.

The essentials of the intensive care unit looking after Corona virus patients but all others in the health care system.

Two things remain unclear just what personal protective equipment they should be wearing.

And when a new supplies arriving.

One junior doctor tired of asking those questions himself took to Twitter.

Dr Samir Raph, Cell wrote.

This is what we call PP.

I might as well go outside and liquor.

Bus window sorted out.

Matt Hancock, one accident emergency doctor we spoke to said that he and his colleagues were quote rolling the dice every time they're in the same room as someone who potentially had Corona virus and up and down the country.

Doctors and health care staffers saying that shortage of kit on a lack of clarity over what should be worn when and where could potentially cost them their lives on that fear has seeped through every level of the stretch system.

On the moment, the equipment is a a standard mosque, an apron on gloves.

We think that the mask and the gloves are fine.

The apron at the moment doesn't cover arms and doesn't cover neck.

So that is an infection risk, potentially on.

We don't have most practices.

Don't have AII equipment.

No word, though, about peopIe in today's daily press conference.

Instead, an update on the number of beds freed up for this fight.

Theo equivalent off 50 hospitals worth today across England, we have reconfigured hospital service is so that 33,000 hospital beds are available to treat further Corona virus patients.

It's also why we are taking the extraordinary action to build new hospitals in very short order, starting with the HSE Nightingale Hospital in East London and today, because this is a problem, of course, not just confined to London, but across the whole country.

I have given the go ahead to the building off to further off these n hs Nightingale hospitals, beginning the Birmingham National Exhibition Center on Dhe, the Manchester Central Convention Center.

With further such hospitals to follow, Nightingale Hospital sounds more charming than the reality government is preparing for.

And this is that reality.

A picture from inside London's Excel Centre Corona virus patient care stretching a kilometer long so the number of beds may have increased.

But ventilators for the worst affected patients are still in dangerously short supply.

One way to boost numbers would have been to join a PAN you effort to bolt by them only.

The government has said that due to a communications mix up, they did not receive e mails and missed the deadline.

Today.

The you said it was discussed several times in the meetings of the Health Security Committee, where the UK participated.

Member states and the UK had the opportunity to signal their interests, too, participating any joint procurements.

Today, the government said the 8000 ventilators we currently have will soon be matched by another 8000.

But the time frame is still uncertain, and timeframes of something disease has no respectful well.

Earlier, before news of the prime minister's diagnosis broke, I spoke to the business secretary, Alec Shama, on.

I asked him if it is safe for people to assume that if the Corona virus crisis goes on for longer than three months, then so will the financial support.

Yes, I think it is safe to say that we will continue to provide support for people through this unprecedented time.

The chances set out an unprecedented set of measures to support businesses and support employees, and indeed the self employed as well as you saw yesterday on as being very clear.

We will do whatever it takes to support our business.

Is sport all people on Ultimately, this is about keeping them safe as well.

So we're now in a position where self employed trades people who are currently feeling they have to go to work could effectively stop or massively cut down on reduce the spread of the infection.