Coronavirus updates as lockdown urged and chains close
Follow the latest coronavirus updates from across the Black Country, Staffordshire, UK and beyond.
Three more coronavirus patients have been confirmed to have died in the Black Country as the UK death toll passed 330.
Boris Johnson is under mounting pressure to order a widespread lockdown after thousands of people ignored calls for “social distancing” to slow the coronavirus pandemic.
There are growing fears that Britain is on a similar trajectory to Italy – scene of the world’s worst outbreak – where the death toll passed 5,000 over the weekend.
The Prime Minister said he will be thinking “very, very actively” about what steps to take if people continue to gather in large numbers in defiance of calls to stay apart.
Meanwhile in Walsall, a 36-year-old nurse and mother-of-three is on a ventilator in intensive care after contracting coronavirus.
Areema Nasreen is in a critical condition at Walsall Manor Hospital where she works.
And for schools it is the first day they have been officially closed apart from for the children of "key workers".
The Department for Education has urged parents to keep their children at home unless their work is deemed “critical” to the country’s response to Covid-19 and they have no other childcare option.
