The Archbishop of Canterbury has announced that public worship is "suspended until further notice".

A Church of England spokesman said weddings and funerals could still go ahead.

The UK's Department of Health has confirmed 1,950 people had tested positive for coronavirus as of 09:00 GMT today.

That is a jump of 407 cases since yesterday - the biggest daily increase so far.

However, it was also the biggest number of tests in one day - 6,337 - with a total of 50,442 carried out so far.

That means 48,492 people have tested negative.

The latest confirmed number of deaths will be announced later today.

NHS England has told hospitals to postpone all non-urgent operations for three months from 15 April.

This will free up 30,000 hospital beds, it says.

Hospitals will also be able to wind down non-urgent work over the next 30 days in an effort to free up more staff and beds for coronavirus patients.

The BBC's Health Editor Hugh Pym has more:

People attending the Tribal Gathering festival in Panama are not being allowed to leave the event's site after the country's government issued a state of emergency over the coronavirus outbreak.

The festival took place between 29 February and 15 March, and was held on a remote beach on Panama's north coast.

In a post on Instagram, the organisers said the health ministry had taken the "extraordinary step of ordering all guests currently on site to remain in place" until 23 March. It is not clear how many people are there.

There were no confirmed or suspected cases of coronavirus among the guests, according to the organisers. They advised relatives of attendees to contact their respective country's embassy for information.

The UK embassy in Panama said on Twitter it had been informed of the situation at the festival and that it was working with the local authorities.

Panama has confirmed 69 cases of coronavirus and one death.

The EU plans to urgently ease rules restricting state aid industries, in order to help businesses hit by the coronavirus crisis.

Thousands of firms across Europe are already suffering, and many fear their cash flow will dry up soon.The situation is particularly urgent for airlines and travel firms.

Under the EU Commission plan, governments will be able to provide direct grants or tax advantages worth up to €500,000 (£454,000; $549,000) per company.

They will also be able to grant guarantees for companies' loans from banks.

And lower interest rates will be provided for companies' loans from private or public lenders.

Furthermore, state aid channelled to the "real economy" via banks will not be treated as direct aid to the banks.

Only companies that experienced difficulties after 31 December 2019 will be eligible for aid under the new EU "temporary framework". That is to ensure that the aid is tied only to those hit by the coronavirus.

Some member states have already announced aid for businesses to keep them afloat as the crisis bites.

Italy has pledged €25bn in extra public spending; France will provide more generous state loan guarantees; and Germany has promised extra loans via the state bank KfW.

Image source, AFP

Covid-19 is a new respiratory coronavirus virus spreading around the world. Scientists and governments say the best protection against it is regular and thorough handwashing.

You should also:

• Avoid contact with people who are unwell
• Catch coughs and sneezes in disposable tissues
• Throw away any used tissues and wash your hands
• Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth with unwashed hands

Many places are now recommending and implementing social distancing measures to try and protect the public.

You can read the latest UK advice here and click here to find out more about how to protect yourself during the outbreak.

Bosnia has declared a nationwide state of emergency due to the coronavirus outbreak, Prime Minister Zoran Tegeltija said.

“We are focusing in all ways on how to alleviate the consequences of the coronavirus," he told reporters.

A body headed by the security ministry will be launched to deal with the outbreak, he said.

Bosnia has reported 26 cases of the new virus so far, with no fatalities.

Asked about school closures, the UK government's chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance says it is "absolutely on the table".

However he adds it would create "an enormous problem for the workforce" and specifically for the NHS.

He says that when they looked at the list of measures in order of which would have the biggest impact "school closing was lower down on the list".

Question Time, the BBC's flagship political debate programme, will proceed without an audience during the coronavirus outbreak.

The show, which normally sees political figures and commentators take questions from a studio audience, will also move to a prime time slot on BBC One.

The practicalities of how to continue taking questions is "still being worked on", BBC media editor Amol Rajan said.

Other changes to BBC news programmes are expected to be announced later.

You can read more about the changes here.

Laura Kuenssberg
BBC political editor

"The government is about to involve itself in the lives of millions of people in ways we haven't seen since the war," one senior figure in the UK government said after Cabinet this morning.

You can only imagine the mood around the table as ministers absorb the scale of what we face as a country and the scale of the responsibility they hold.

Whether it is urging people not to travel abroad, providing huge emergency assistance to particular industries, or telling people to stay at home, according to that Cabinet minister, we are living through a massive change in the relationship between government and the public that could last for many months.

What the prime minister said barely two weeks ago, that the UK would "likely face a challenge", has very rapidly turned into the biggest peacetime task any modern government has faced - managing a very serious international health emergency and trying to stave off the worst of a potential economic emergency too.

Read more from Laura here.

Image source, HoC

The UK government's chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance is appearing at the House of Common's health committee.

He tells MPs that the UK should start to see rates of infection come down in two to three weeks.

He says it would be "a good outcome" if the number of coronavirus-related deaths in the UK can be kept to below 20,000.

As moving videos of Italians singing from their balconies go viral, the Dutch are following suit - with varying results.

A person in the Brazilian city of São Paulo is the first person to die from coronavirus in the country.

Brazil has 234 confirmed cases of the virus, in a population of 209 million people. It has not shut its borders, but in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, schools and universities have been told to close and public events have been called off.

However, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has dismissed precautions against coronavirus as “hysteria" and “fantasy".

So far Latin America has not reported significant clusters of the virus in the same way as parts of Asia, Europe and the US.

However some countries are not taking chances. Peru declared a national emergency, closed its borders and told everybody to self-quarantine for 14 days, while Chile said it would close its borders after cases more than doubled there to 155.

Read more about how the virus is affecting Latin America.

It has so far been unclear exactly how long SARS-CoV-2, the name of the virus that causes the disease Covid-19, can survive outside the human body.

Neeltje van Doremalen, a virologist at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), and her colleagues at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Montana, have done some of the first tests of how long SARS-CoV-2 can last for on different surfaces.

Their study, which has yet to be published in a scientific journal, suggests that the virus could survive in droplets for up to three hours after being coughed out into the air.

It means that the virus circulating in unfiltered air conditioning systems will only persist for a couple of hours at most. But it survived for longer on cardboard – up to 24 hours – and up to 2-3 days on plastic and stainless-steel surfaces.

The findings suggest the virus might last this long on door handles, plastic-coated or laminated worktops and other hard surfaces. The researchers did find, however, that copper surfaces tended to kill the virus in about four hours.

Click here to find out more.

A dog-walking exception to Spain’s national lockdown is reportedly being exploited as an excuse to leave home as the government battles to contain coronavirus.

Spain’s government declared a state of emergency last week, imposing a 15-day long period of restrictions on movement to stem the spread of coronavirus.

Some 47 million Spanish residents have been banned from leaving home, with a few exceptions for emergencies, going to work and essential errands.

Read the full story: Spain announces sweeping restrictions

The Spanish government said walking dogs was one of those errands, but some people are reportedly taking advantage of the exception – taking lengthy strolls, socialising in public or masquerading stuffed animals as real pets.

A video shared by Jupol, a Spanish police union, on Twitter appears to show a man walking through the street with a toy dog on a leash as a police car pulls up alongside him.

In the tweet, Jupol warned people they could be punished if they try to deceive the police.

Spanish authorities can levy a fine on those who breach restrictions on movement while the state of emergency is in force.

The mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez Almeida, has called on dog owners not to abuse the exception, external. "It is logical that the dog should be walked, but it [should be] done for a minimum indispensable time," he said in an interview on Telemadrid.

In some parts of Spain, dog owners are offering their animals for rent to walkers on classified ad website Wallapop, external. Prices vary, but some are renting their pets for as much as 50 euros (£45; $54) per walk.

Image source, PA Media

Former UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt asks his successor Dominic Raab if Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is among the prisoners who have been released by Iran in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak.

As we reported earlier, Iran has been releasing prisoners in an effort to combat the spread of the new coronavirus disease in crowded jails.

British-Iranian charity worker Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe was jailed for five years in 2016 after being convicted of espionage charges that she has denied. The UK has also insisted she is innocent.

"We are waiting for confirmation in relation to individual cases," replies Mr Raab adding "I want to be careful and wait until I have got actual confirmation."

He adds that "this is a high priority" for the government and confirms he has raised it with the Iranian government.

Israel’s health ministry has announced new restrictions for residents, ordering people not to leave their homes unless they need to get food or medication, seek medical attention, or carry out essential work.

Trips to parks, playgrounds, beaches, pools and libraries are banned.

Meanwhile, the Magen David Adam ambulance service has said it will set up a number of 24-hour “drive-through” facilities to help expand testing of people suspected of having the virus that causes Covid-19.

Overnight, an Israel Railways train was stopped by police searching for a male patient who fled from a hospital in northern Israel, according to the Haaretz newspaper. Police officers wearing protective gear boarded the train, arrested the man and took him to another hospital for examination.

Israel has so far reported 324 confirmed cases of Covid-19, but no related deaths. The Palestinian authorities have reported 41 cases in the occupied West Bank.

Thieves in Germany have stolen 50,000 protective face masks intended for medical clinics from a hospital, German news agency DPA reports.

"This is a new grade of theft", a spokeswoman for the hospital in Cologne told DPA.

"We're talking about items that normally have a value measured in cents, but apparently there's a market for them now."

The city's crisis management team took measures to secure and check all stocks after the theft.

Image source, Getty Images

Chinese billionaire and co-founder of Alibaba, Jack Ma, has pledged donate 20,000 testing kits, 100,000 masks and 1,000 protective suits to each African country to help the fight against coronavirus.

Mr Ma, Asia's richest person, earlier this month sent consignments of medical supplies to the US and pledged to distribute two million protective masks across Europe.

The supplies for Africa would be delivered to Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed overseeing distribution to the rest of the continent, he said in a statement.

"As members of the global community, it will be irresponsible of us to sit on the fence, panic, ignore facts, or fail to act. We need to take action now," he said.

Mr Abiy confirmed the news in a series of tweets and spoke of his "great appreciation" for Jack Ma's partnership:

Mr Ma said his Jack Ma Foundation and Alibaba Foundation would also provide online material for coronavirus clinical treatment to medical institutions on the continent.

There has been a sharp rise in coronavirus cases in Africa in recent days, although they are still fewer than in most other continents.

Strict measures have been ordered - including travel restrictions and the closure of schools - in South Africa and Kenya among others.

There are concerns that the continent's weak health systems may be unable to cope with a large outbreak, and that governments lack financial and logistical resources to deal with the virus.

Read more:

• Africa v coronavirus: A challenge for the continent
• Coronavirus: A Cameroon student on how he recovered

Image source, PA Media

Advising people to limit social contact brings a particular challenge to a postal service that relies on people going door to door.

As a result, Royal Mail workers have been told not to give customers hand-held devices to sign for deliveries that need a signature.

Workers delivering post to customers will instead log the name of the person accepting the item, and can sign on their behalf.

In addition, when items are too big to fit through the letterbox, Royal Mail staff have been asked to place them on the doorstep and step back to a safe distance.