Amazon stated Saturday it will improve beyond regular time pay for employees in its US warehouses among March fifteenth and May 9th, Reuters reviews. Instead of the usual time-and-a-half they acquire now for extra time, Amazon warehouse workers inside the US will receive double their hourly rate for every additional time hour worked in a given workweek, the company stated.

The assertion comes an afternoon after 4 US senators despatched a letter to AmazonCEO Jeff Bezos asking him to respond to questions on how the corporation is maintaining its warehouse workers safe in the course of the coronavirus outbreak. The senators sent the letter  days after the primary US-based totally Amazon warehouse employee tested high-quality for COVID-19, the disorder caused by the virus.

Amazon warehouse workers have said that the uptick in orders— as people hunker down at home to prevent the unfold of coronavirus— has brought about many to turn out to be concerned for his or her fitness. 24 warehouse workers and transport drivers, who described crowded places of work, a loss of screenings for symptoms, a scarcity of cleaning components, and a pace that made sanitation hard.

The world is vulnerable to a new type of trolling as people turn to Zoom  video calls to feel connected amidst quarantines. Jerks are using Zoom’s screensharing feature to blast other viewers with the most awful videos from across the internet, from violence to shocking pornography.

That’s just what happened today on the WFH Happy Hour, a popular daily public Zoom call hosted by The Verge reporter Casey Newton and investor Hunter Walk. Suddenly, dozens of attendees were bombarded with disturbing imagery. A troll entered the call and screenshared Two Girls, One Cup and other horrifying sexual videos. Attempts to block the attack were thwarted as the perpetrator simply re-entered the call under a new name and screenshared more gross-out clips. The hosts ended the call rather than subject viewers to the assault until they could stop it.

The problem stems from Zoom’s policy that “The host does not need to grant screen share access for another participant to share their screen.” However, hosts can disable this option in their settings or the Admin controls of a call. You can either change this in your pre-meeting Settings, or in the in-call admin settings for Share Screen -> Advanced Sharing Settings.

Anyone publicly sharing Zoom links where they could be discovered by trolls, like on Twitter, should be sure to change screensharing to “Host Only” before a call starts or as soon as they see the feature being abused. Some tips from entrepreneur Alex Miller for other ways to protect your Zoom calls include:

• Disable “Join Before Host” so people can’t cause trouble before you arrive
• Enabling “Co-Host” so you can assign others to help moderate
• Disable “File Transfer” so there’s no digital virus sharing
• Disable “Allow Removed Participants to Rejoin” so booted attendees can’t slip back in.
• “I want to apologize to all our attendees — including my parents, Jim and Sally, who joined #WFHappyHour today for the first time. Today we all learned an important lesson about disabling screen sharing and saw once again the importance of good content moderation” Newton tells me. When asked if he had any photographic evidence of the attack, he told me “lol I was not taking screenshots! I was screaming!”
  This is just one of the many new vectors for abuse we’re experiencing in the coronavirus age. We’ve seen phishing attacks purporting to offer health screenings, scams claiming people’s electricity would be shut off during quarantine if they don’t pay, and fake COVID-19 testing kits on sale. There’s always someone willing to exploit a tragedy for money or just to see the world burn, so it’s more important than ever to stay vigilant and keep that “block” button handy.

• #Coronavirus: Israel enables emergency spy powers
• 
  

More than a billion Android devices are at risk of being hacked because they are no longer protected by security updates, watchdog Which? has suggested.

The vulnerability could leave users around the world exposed to the danger of data theft, ransom demands and other malware attacks.

Anyone using an Android phone released in 2012 or earlier should be especially concerned, it said.

Which? says it was not reassured by Google's response.

Google's own data suggests that 42.1% of Android users worldwide are on version 6.0 of its operating system or below.

According to the Android security bulletin, there were no security patches issued for the Android system in 2019 for versions below 7.0.

Extrapolating this data, Which? concluded that two in five Android users worldwide were no longer receiving security updates.

It then tested five phones:

• a Motorola X
• a Samsung Galaxy A5
• a Sony Xperia Z2
• an LG/Google Nexus 5
• a Samsung Galaxy S6

Which? asked anti-virus lab AV Comparatives to infect them with malware - and it succeeded on every phone, creating multiple infections on some.

It said it shared its findings with Google but the tech giant "failed to provide reassurance that it has plans in place to help users whose devices were no longer supported".

The watchdog wants Google and others to provide far more transparency around how long updates for smart devices will be provided.

And it said the mobile industry needed to do a better job of giving support to customers about their options once security updates are no longer available.

Kate Bevan, Which? Computing editor, said: "It's very concerning that expensive Android devices have such a short shelf life before they lose security support, leaving millions of users at risk of serious consequences if they fall victim to hackers.

"Google and phone manufacturers need to be upfront about security updates - with clear information about how long they will last and what customers should do when they run out.

"The government must also push ahead with planned legislation to ensure manufacturers are far more transparent about security updates for smart devices - and their impact on consumers."

How to check whether your phone is vulnerable and what to do

• If your Android device is more than two years old, check whether it can be updated to a newer version of the operating system. If you are on an earlier version than Android 7.0 Nougat, try to update via Settings> System>Advanced System update
• If you can't update, your phone could be at risk of being hacked, especially if you are running a version of Android 4 or lower. If this is the case be careful about downloading apps outside the Google Play store
• Also be wary of suspicious SMS or MMS messages
• Back up data in at least two places (a hard drive and a cloud service)
• Install a mobile anti-virus via an app, but bear in mind that the choice is limited for older phones

Tier 1 internet service providers (ISP) mesh their high-speed fiber-optic networks together to create the internet backbone, which moves traffic efficiently among geographic regions:

The internet generates massive amounts of computer-to-computer traffic, and insuring all that traffic can be delivered anywhere in the world requires the aggregation of a vast array of high-speed networks collectively known as the internet backbone, but how does that work?

What is the internet backbone?

Like any other network, the internet consists of access links that move traffic to high-bandwidth routers that move traffic from its source over the best available path toward its destination. This core is made up of individual high-speed fiber-optic networks that peer with each other to create the internet backbone.

The individual core networks are privately owned by Tier 1 internet service providers (ISP), giant carriers whose networks are tied together. These providers include AT&T, CenturyLink, Cogent Communications, Deutsche Telekom, Global Telecom and Technology (GTT), NTT Communications, Sprint, Tata Communications, Telecom Italia Sparkle, Telia Carrier, and Verizon.

By joining these long-haul networks together, Tier 1 ISPs create a single worldwide network that gives all of them access to the entire internet routing table so they can efficiently deliver traffic to its destination through a hierarchy of progressively more local ISPs.

In addition to being physically connected, these backbone providers are held together by a shared network protocol, TCP/IP. They are actually two protocols, transport control protocol and internet protocol that set up connections between computers, insuring that the connections are reliable and formating messages into packets.

Internet exchange points (IXP) tie the backbone together

Backbone ISPs connect their networks at peering points, neutrally owned locations with high-speed switches and routers that move traffic among the peers. These are often owned by third parties, sometimes non-profits, that facilitate unifying the backbone.

Participating Tier 1 ISPs help fund the IXPs, but don’t charge each other for transporting traffic from the other Tier 1 ISPs in a relationship known as settlement-free peering. Such agreements eliminate potential financial disputes that might have the result of slowing down internet performance.

How fast is the backbone?

The internet backbone is made up of the fastest routers, which can deliver 100Gbps trunk speeds. These routers are made by vendors including Cisco, Extreme, Huawei, Juniper, and Nokia, and use the border gateway protocol (BGP) to route traffic among themselves.

How traffic gets on the backbone

Below the Tier 1 ISPs are smaller Tier 2 and Tier 3 ISPs.

Tier 3 providers provide businesses and consumers with access to the internet. These providers have no access of their own to the internet backbone, so on their own would not be able to connect their customers to all of the billions of internet-attached computers.

Buying access to Tier 1 providers is expensive. So often Tier 3 ISPs contract with Tier 2 (regional) ISPs that have their own networks that can deliver traffic to a limited geographic area but not to all internet-attached devices.

In order to do that, Tier 2 ISPs contract with Tier 1 ISPs for access to the global backbone, and in that way make the entire internet accesssible to their customers.

This arrangment makes it possible for traffic from a computer on one side of the world to connect to one on the other side. That traffic goes from a source computer to a Tier 3 ISP that routes it to a Tier 2 ISP that routes it to a Tier 1 backbone provider that routes it to the appropriate Tier 2 ISP that routes it to a Tier 3 access provider that delivers it to the destination computer.

Our screens have always been defined, at least in part, by their frames. Early TVs had tiny 10-inch screens, housed in enormous cases that looked more like furniture than anything you'd recognize as a modern television. But those borders slowly disappeared over time as CRT sets got smaller and flat panels eventually took over. Today, the tech industry is practically waging a war against bezels. The less border around your screens, the better -- every millimeter separating the display and the real world is an affront to good design.

On a basic level, it's easy to see why the industry is moving in this direction. Minimizing bezels allows gadget-makers to cram larger screens into smaller cases. The iPhone 11  iOS 13Max would have a hard time fitting in a 6.5-inch screen, and still being usable, if it still had the chunky bezels we saw on earlier iPhones. It's clear, after the success of phablets and ever-larger 4K TVs, that consumers generally take a "bigger is better" approach when it comes to display size. But gigantic TVs have existed for decades, so what's the value in shaving off a few more millimeters around the screen?

It starts with the rise of HDTVs. Early televisions convinced people they needed a screen in their homes -- who wouldn't want a window of their own to a whole new world of shows, films and news? The move to high definition introduced an entirely new level of realism and dramatically thinner TVs. Buying a hefty 32-inch CRT or enormous rear projection set meant sacrificing a ton of space in your home -- but it didn't take much to bring a 50-inch LCD into your living room. For the first time, you could even mount your TV on the wall!

"I think the the subtle implication is that, as bezels disappear, as hardware gets thinner, the technology is blending more and more effectively into our day-to-day lives," Khoi Vinh, Adobe's senior director of product design, says in an interview with Engadget. "So, where we're used to having very thick bezels essentially, like a declaration that we have a boundary for this [device] right now. ... The more the bezels disappear, the more the technology becomes indistinguishable from a book on your bookshelf, or a vase on your table ..."

According to Vinh, tech companies are trying to make their devices truly indispensable household objects. Erasing the edges between the screens and the real world is the latest way to show off their technology leadership. It's also more than just a design fad; it actually has an effect on your interaction with the device. As I've tested laptops like HP's Spectre x360 and lived with an LG OLED TV for several years, all of which have incredibly thin bezels, I've found myself feeling more immersed in their screens compared to older and boxier designs.

Fitness, wallpaper, and lost item-finding startups could have a big new competitor baked into everyone’s iPhones. Leaks of the code from iOS 14 that Apple is expected to reveal in June signal several new features and devices are on the way. Startups could be at risk due to Apple’s ability to integrate these additions at the iOS level, instantly gain an enormous install base and offer them for free or cheap, as long as they boost sales of its main money maker, the iPhone.

It’s unclear if all of these fresh finds will actually get official unveiling in June versus further down the line. But here’s a breakdown of what the iOS 14 code obtained by 9To5Mac’s Chance Miller shows and which startups could be impacted by Apple barging into their businesses:

Fitness – Codename: Seymour

Apple appears to be preparing a workout guide app for iOS, WatchOS and Apple TV that would let users download instructional video clips for doing different exercises. The app could potentially be called Fit or Fitness, according to MacRumors‘ Juli Clover, and offer help with stretching, core training, strength training, running, cycling, rowing, outdoor walking, dance and yoga. The Apple Watch appears to help track your progress through the workout routines.

The iOS Health app is already a popular way to track steps and other fitness goals. By using Health to personalize or promote a new Fitness feature, Apple has an easy path to a huge user base. Many people are afraid of weight and strength training because there’s a lot to learn about having proper form to avoid injury or embarrassment. Visual guides with videos shot from multiple angles could make sure you’re doing those push ups or bicep curls correctly.

Apple’s entrance into fitness could endanger startups like Future, which offer customized workout routines with video clips demonstrating how to do each exercise. The $11.5 million-funded Future  actually sends you an Apple Watch with its $150 per month service to track your progress while using visuals, sounds and vibrations to tell you when to switch exercises without having to look at your phone. By removing Future’s human personal trainers that text to nag you if you don’t work out, Apple could offer a simplified version of this startup’s app for free.

Apple Fitness could be even more trouble for less premium apps like Sweat  and Sworkit that provide basic visual guidance for workouts, or Aaptiv that’s restricted to just audio cues. Hardware startups like Peloton, which offers off-bike Beyond the Ride workouts with live or on-demand class, and Tempo’s giant 3D-sensing in-home screen for weight lifting, could also find casual customers picked off by a free or cheap alternative from Apple.

There’s no code indicating a payment mechanism, so Apple Fitness could be free. But it’s also easy to imagine Apple layering on a premium feature like remote personal training assistance from human experts or a wider array of exercises for a fee, tying into its increasing focus on services revenue.

AirTags – find your stuff

Apple appears to be getting closer to launching its long-awaited AirTags, based on iOS 14 code snippets. These small tracking tags could be attached to your wallet, keys, gadgets or other important or easily lost items, and then located using the iOS Find My app. AirTags may be powered by removable coin-shaped batteries, according to MacRumors.

Native integration with iOS could make AirTags super-easy to set up. They also could benefit from the ubiquity of Apple devices, as the company could let the crowd help find your stuff by allowing AirTags to piggyback on the connectivity of any of its phones, tablets or laptops to send you the missing item’s coordinates.

Most obviously, AirTags could become a powerful competitor to the vertical’s long-standing frontrunner, Tile. The $104 million-funded startup sells $20 to $35 tracking tags that locate devices from 150 to 400 feet away. It also sells a $30 per year subscription for free battery replacements and 30-day location history. Other players in the space include Chipolo, Orbit and MYNT.

But as we saw with the launch of AirPods, Apple’s design expertise and native iOS integrations can allow its products to leapfrog what’s in the market. If Air Tags get proprietary access to the iPhone’s Bluetooth and other connectivity hardware, and if they’re quicker to set up, Apple fans might jump from startups to these new devices. Apple also could develop a similar premium subscription for battery or full AirTag replacements, as well as bonus tracking features.

Apple got off to a great start in 2020. 

Chief Executive Tim Cook lauded the company’s “blockbuster quarter” for the three months that ended in December 2019, in which the company posted market beating earnings and revenue. The iPhone 11 series appeared to be doing well, especially in China, one of the company’s most critical markets. 

On Jan. 29, a day after its earnings, Apple shares hit an intra-day high of $327.85, even after it gave wider-than-usual guidance for its March quarter. Investors felt content. 

At that point, the number of coronavirus cases in China stood at over 7,000 versus more than 80,000 on Monday.  

In early February, analysts reiterated their buy ratings on Apple’s stock and strong price targets. While acknowledging the outbreak of the coronavirus, they felt Apple could withstand it. 

“Overall, we see the coronavirus impact on AAPL as a dynamic that continues to gain in importance to the company, though we size the present impact to be relatively minimal, financially,” Deutsche Bank said in a note on Feb. 2, referring to Apple’s stock code on the Nasdaq.

Then the reality of its impact sank in. 

Apple’s reliance on China

On Feb. 17, Apple said it did not expect to meet the revenue guidance for the March quarter of $63 billion to $67 billion. China was mostly to blame.

The coronavirus forced the annual Lunar New Year holiday to be extended. That meant Apple stores and the factories that make iPhones, run by Foxconn, remained shut for longer. Production wasn’t happening and demand had waned. 

“We are experiencing a slower return to normal conditions than we had anticipated,” Apple warned. 

Even now, Taiwan’s Foxconn, the main company that assembles iPhones in China, is not at full capacity and not all of Apple’s retail stores in mainland China have opened. 

China accounts for nearly 15% of sales for the company but crucially, it is at the heart of iPhone production which will affect supply globally.

The bad news kept rolling in. On Monday, official Chinese government figures showed Apple shipped fewer than 500,000 iPhones in February, a 60% year-on-year decline.

“These are doomsday type of iPhone units and overall smartphone sales which are not surprising given the essential lockdown that most of China saw during the month of February with stores closed and the supply chain under massive pressure due to the coronavirus outbreak in the country,” Daniel Ives, analyst at Wedbush Securities, said in a note on Monday.

On top of that, there are concerns that Apple may not be able to launch new products on time, and that may include a rumored 5G-capable iPhone.

Shares slammed 

Since the record intra-day high, Apple shares have fallen nearly 19% that’s wiped off billions of dollars in value, even as the broader equity markets saw a violent sell-off. 

According to a Reuters poll, analysts are still predicting that Apple could potentially hit new record highs this year after a big rally in 2019. In fact, the current average 12-month price target on Apple’s stock is $333.57. If realized, it would represent a 25% rise from Monday’s closing price. It would also be a new record high for the stock. 

Given that the $333.57

Getting there will be a lot harder than it seemed earlier in the year, however, particularly as the coronavirus spread has gone global. UBS warned in a note last week that demand impact is “likely to expand beyond China.” 

“We had moved some demand from March into June but given the broader impact, we now think the demand impact could continue into Jun,” analysts at the investment bank said.

UBS lowered its June quarter iPhone unit sales by an estimated 2 million, to 38 million units. It also reduced its earnings and revenue estimates for Apple for the fiscal year ending September 2020. 

Google removes Iran's official COVID-19 detection app from the Play Store.

Google has removed today an Android app from the official Play Store that was developed by the Iranian government to test and keep track of COVID-19 (coronavirus) infections.

Before being removed from the Play Store, controversy surrounded the app, and several users accused the Iranian government of using the COVID-19 scare to trick citizens into installing the app and then collecting phone numbers and real-time geo-location data.

In hindsight of accusations, TNT has asked Lukas Stefanko, an Android malware researcher at ESET, to review the app for any malicious or spyware-like behavior.

"Based on the analysis of the app's APK, the app is not a malicious Trojan or spyware," Stefanko told TNT earlier today.

A Google spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on the reasons the app was removed; however, sources familiar with Play Store policies told TNT the app was most likely taken down because of its misleading claims -- namely that it could detect COVID-19 infections, something that is impossible through an app.

Suspected COVID-19 patients are tested and confirmed as infected following a microbiological analysis of a throat swab.

AC19 -- IRAN'S NATIONAL COVID-19 "DETECTION" APP

The app, which is named AC19, was released last week and was made available through a dedicated website, the official Play Store, and other third-party app stores.

The app was released while Iran is in the midst of a national health crisis, with the country being one of the most impacted countries in the world by the novel COVID-19 coronavirus.

After it's release, Iran's Health Ministry sent a mass SMS message to all Iranians urging them to install the app to check potential COVID-19 symptoms.

The app would let users register using their phone number and then ask Iranians to answer a series of questions related to coronavirus symptoms.

The idea was to let Iranians determine if they had severe symptoms, in order to prevent citizens from needlessly flooding local hospitals.

However, the app would also request access to real-time geo-location details, which it would immediately upload to a remote backend.

TIES TO A SUSPICIOUS APP DEVELOPER

Although access to this geo-location information was requested through a legitimate permission prompt that users had to agree, it was soon discovered that the app had been developed by a company that has previously built other apps for the Iranian regime.

The company, named Smart Land Strategy, previously built two Telegram clones named Gold Telegram and HotGram. Both apps were removed from the Play Store on accusations of secretly collecting user data, and reports at the time[1, 2, 3] claimed the apps were developed at the behest of Iranian intelligence agencies.

However, Stefanko said AC19 did not contain any suspicious behavior, and the app requested access to location data just like any regular Android app. Furthermore, being a health-related app, such a request wouldn't be out of place for this category of apps, Stefanko added.

It is very likely that the app was caught in the crackdown against COVID-19-related content. Many tech companies that run app stores and online advertising platforms -- like Apple, Facebook, and Google -- have recently begun cracking down on COVID-19-related content, especially the ones that pretend to offer detection services, fake cures, peddle conspiracy theorists, or other misleading content.

But even if the AC19 app was clean at the moment, in hindsight of Smart Land Strategy's ties to the previous Telegram clones, Iranian dissidents who requested we not name them in this article told TNT that the Iranian government could be using the current COVID-19 pandemic as a ruse to trick millions of Iranians into installing the app, collect their device and location details, and then install malware on their devices through a subsequent update.

What is certain at the time of writing is that millions of Iranians have already installed the app, and that the app's data is reaching Iranian government bodies.

According to a tweet shared today by MJ Azari Jahromi, Iran's Minister of Information and Communications Technology, the government has already collected location data points for more than four million Iranians with the help of the app.

Currently, while the app has been removed from the Play Store, the app is still being offered for download through the ac19.ir website and other third-party app stores.

New York City’s mayor also urged residents to work from home:

Amazon told employees in New York and New Jersey that they should work from home for the month of March if they can, TNT reports. The internet giant’s Audible audiobook division is located in Newark, New Jersey, and it has thousands of employees in New York City.

“We continue to work closely with public and private medical experts to ensure we are taking the right precautions as the situation continues to evolve,” an Amazon spokesperson told TNT. “This includes recommending that employees who are able to work from home in Seattle/Bellevue, the Bay Area, New York, New Jersey and the Lombardy region/Asti province of Italy do so through the end of March.”

Amazon told its warehouse workers and other employees late on Sunday that the company won’t count unpaid time off that employees take during March.

On Monday, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio urged city residents to work from home if possible. “For a business that can allow more employees to telecommute, we want you to do that,” he told reporters at a press conference. “We simply want to reduce the number of people on mass transit just to open up some more space.” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency on Saturday as the number of coronavirus cases in the state continued to rise.

Last week, Amazon joined other tech giants with operations in Seattle, telling employees there to work from home until the end of March. Amazon confirmed on March 2nd that one of its Seattle-based employees was quarantined with the novel coronavirus. The company already restricted all nonessential domestic travel in response to the outbreak.

On Monday, Google said it would expand an earlier ban on visitors to its Washington office and restrict visitors to its offices in the San Francisco area and New York.

Facebook, Twitter, Google rebel against Pakistan's new digital law

Through a group called the Asia Internet Coalition (AIC), the digital giants wrote a scathing letter to Pakistan PM Imran Khan. AIC has called the rules 'vague and arbitrary in nature'

Digital media giants Facebook, Twitter and Google have threatened  to suspend services in Pakistan after Prime Minister Imran Khan's government gave approval to new social media regulations in the country.

Through a group called the Asia Internet Coalition (AIC), the digital giants wrote a scathing letter to Pakistan PM Imran Khan. AIC has called the rules "vague and arbitrary in nature". The companies warned that "the rules as currently written would make it extremely difficult for AIC Members to make their services available to Pakistani users and businesses".

The Asia Internet Coalition is an industry association that promotes the understanding and resolution of internet policy issues in the Asia Pacific region.

"We are not against regulation of social media, and we acknowledge that Pakistan already has an extensive legislative framework governing online content. However, these rules fail to address crucial issues such as internationally recognized rights to individual expression and privacy," AIC added.

As per the new rules, Pakistan has made it mandatory for social media companies to open offices in Islamabad (capital of Pakistan). Besides, the country has instructed these digital giants to build data servers to store information and take down content upon identification of authorities.

Besides, through this new digital censorship law, authorities will be able to take action against its citizens if found guilty of targeting state institutions at home and abroad on social media.

Failure to comply with the government will result in hefty fines and possible termination of services.

"In case of failure to comply within 15 days, it would have the power to suspend their services or impose a fine worth up to 500 million Pakistani rupees".

The web giant has just over 3,000 employees in its three London offices, all of whom are being told to work from home.

Facebook is closing its three London offices and telling staff to work from home after an employee was diagnosed with COVID-19.

The number of coronavirus cases worldwide has now passed 100,000, according to Johns Hopkins University, as the outbreak intensifies.

There have been 47 new cases of coronavirus confirmed in the UK over the last 24 hours, taking the total number to 163, with two deaths.

A Facebook employee who was normally based in Singapore was diagnosed with the virus after visiting the company's London offices between 24-26 February, a spokesperson told TNT News.

Facebook has just over 3,000 employees in London. TNT News was unable to learn how many individuals had been in direct contact with the person who was diagnosed, but Facebook said that the company had been in contact with them all.

These individuals are being asked to self-isolate and be vigilant in monitoring whether they develop symptoms. COVID-19, the disease caused by coronavirus, is believed to gestate for up to two weeks before symptoms develop.

The company is now also reaching out to any employees and contingent workers based in other offices that visited London over the past few days to warn them.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Facebook told TNT News: "An employee based in our Singapore office who has been diagnosed with COVID-19 visited our London offices 24-26 February 2020.

"We are therefore closing our London offices until Monday for deep cleaning and employees are working from home until then."

It follows another diagnosis of a Facebook worker in Seattle, prompting the company to close its offices there in order to handle the risk posed to other staff.

On Thursday, a woman reported to be in her 70s became the first person in the UK to die after being diagnosed with coronavirus.

The Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading said the woman had been "in and out of hospital" for other reasons but was admitted on Wednesday evening and tested positive.

Meanwhile, two British Airways staff tested positive for coronavirus on Friday and are recovering at home in isolation.

"Public Health England (PHE) has confirmed that two members of our staff have tested positive for the COVID-19 virus," it said in a statement.