Coronvirus updates LIVE: Scott Morrison announces $130 billion 'Jobkeeper' wage subsidy, Victoria implements stage three social distancing restrictions

In a late story, it has been revealed that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, is the latest senior government figure to show symptoms of the new coronavirus.

Johnson's office says Cummings developed symptoms at the weekend and is self- isolating at home.

Johnson announced Friday that he has tested positive for COVID-19 and has mild symptoms. Health Secretary Matt Hancock has also tested positive, while the chief medical officer of England, Chris Whitty, says he is self-isolating after showing symptoms.

Senior UK officials have been criticized for continuing to hold face-to-face meetings until recently, even while urging the rest of the country to stay home and avoid all but essential contact with others.

The Andrews government believes Victoria has reached a stage of social and economic shutdown that will enable the health system to withstand the COVID-19 pandemic and avoid a large-scale loss of life.

Sources in the Department of Premier and Cabinet confirmed that, unless the rate of infections dramatically rises, the stage-three restrictions which came into force at midnight on Monday will be the "new normal" for Victorian life while the virus runs its course.

Although it is likely that further businesses will be forced to shutter their operations as the local epidemic unfolds, Premier Daniel Andrews on Monday shifted his rhetoric from previously warning that further restrictions were inevitable.

Asked whether an additional shutdown stage would be required, Mr Andrews indicated this would only become necessary if people failed to observe the current regime or the number of new infections started to climb.

China's failure to give "clear" information about the spread of the coronavirus has been blamed for worsening the spread of the disease amid a growing diplomatic row with Beijing.

British Chancellor Michael Gove said China had not shared accurate data about the "scale, nature and infectiousness" of the disease, as Downing Street sources suggesting the Communist superpower would face a "reckoning" when the pandemic is over.

Tory MPs have used the anger towards China to renew calls for the government to rethink its policy on using Huawei to build part of the 5G mobile phone network.

But there were also accusations that ministers are using China as a convenient scapegoat to deflect criticism from the British government's failure to ramp up testing in the way that many other countries have done. Britain has only just reached the 10,000 tests per day mark, whereas Germany, which has a much lower death rate from coronavirus, does 500,000 tests per week, seven times as many as Britain.

Foreign Minister Marise Payne has promised more than 100 Australians who are stuck on a cruise ship in South America they will be partly reimbursed for a rescue charter flight out of Uruguay.

Australians aboard the Ocean Atlantic ship moored at Montevideo, in Uruguay, have begged Prime Minister Scott Morrison to expedite their charter flight home after its cost nearly doubled when the ship they were sharing it with was denied entry to the port.

The passengers were originally being charged $5000 by travel company Chimu Adventures, but are now being told the cost would significantly increase.

Senator Payne said the Australian government had been working closely with the Uruguayan government and Chimu Adventures to get 127 Australians off the Ocean Atlantic cruise ship and onto a flight home.

Their eyes are tired. Their cheekbones rubbed raw from protective masks. They don't smile.

The doctors and nurses on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic in Italy are almost unrecognisable behind their masks, scrubs, gloves and hairnets - the flimsy battle armour donned at the start of each shift as the only barrier to contagion.

Associated Press photographers fanned out on Friday to photograph them during rare breaks from hospital intensive care units in the Lombardy region cities of Bergamo and Brescia, and in Rome. In each case, doctors, nurses and paramedics posed in front of forest green surgical drapes, the bland backdrop of their sterile wards.

Friday was a bad day: Italy registered the most deaths since the country's outbreak had exploded five weeks earlier, adding 969 more victims to raise the world's highest COVID-19 toll to 9134. Lombardy accounted for 541 of them.