 Hello and welcome to the International Daily Roundup by People's Dispatch, where we bring you some of the major news developments from across the globe. We begin with our daily COVID-19 update. As of Tuesday morning, GMT over 382,000 cases have been reported with over 16,500 deaths. China reported 78 new cases on Monday, of which 74 were imported. Meanwhile, the number of cases in Italy and the US has touched 64,000 and close to 47,000 respectively. WHO director Tedros Adhanom-Gabrielsius said that the pandemic spread was getting faster, as it had taken only four days for the number of cases to rise from 200,000 to 300,000. The United Kingdom is set to go into lockdown mode following the example of Italy, France and Germany. South Africa has announced a 21-day lockdown on Thursday. Many other countries, including India, are in various stages of lockdown too. In India, domestic flights are being grounded from today night and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to address the country again for the second time in less than a week. Hospital systems in even developed countries are facing stress, as these images from Spain show. In the US too, authorities, especially New York, have been warning of major equipment shortage. Meanwhile, the US Congress and the Trump administration have been negotiating a relief plan. There are strong arguments over the administration's plan for hourly wage workers and tenants in the US, which the opposition Democratic party has stated would be grossly inadequate. Meanwhile, Democratic presidential candidate and Senator Bernie Sanders has been pushing for a $2 trillion relief plan that will include rent and a mortgage freeze. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres appealed for an immediate ceasefire across the world, as concerns rise of the spread of coronavirus in conflicted areas like Syria and Yemen. Syria reportedly recorded its first case yesterday. In our next story, one of the aspects that is given as hope amid this gloom has been the extraordinary solidarity displayed by the people and government of Cuba. Despite being the target of sanctions and often facing discrimination in international fora, Cuba has once again risen to the occasion by offering help to a number of countries both in the region and afar. At the forefront of Cuba's aid are its legendary doctors, who are now in Italy, to help the country which has suffered a crippling blow due to the pandemic. Here is a feature on their work. Now, third story. The Italian trade union, Union Sindical Debates or USB, has called for a national strike on March 25th. The strike was called to ensure a complete lockdown of non-essential goods and production in the country. USB stated that despite the ongoing lockdown due to the coronavirus outbreak, the government has not been assertive enough in shutting down non-essential goods production. This, they argued, risks further spread of the infection at a time when Italy has become the epicenter of the pandemic. USB also stated that non-essential manufacturing continues because of pressure from the Italian employers' confederation, the general confederation of Italian industry or the confidustria. Such powerful law-being, they argued, risked the lives of tens of thousands of workers for the pursuit of maximizing profits. Italy has been severely affected by the pandemic with over 64,000 cases and over 6,000 deaths. A Palestinian man who was picked up by Israeli authorities on Monday was reported to have been abandoned in Palestinian authority control territory after he reported severe illness. The unidentified man is a resident of Nablus and is employed in Israel. He was found lying on the ground near the Bezra checkpoint in Ramallah unable to stand and with severe breathing problems. According to various reports, the man showed symptoms of the coronavirus infection and had himself tested for COVID-19 at a medical facility within Israel. After the man reported his illness to his employer, the Israeli authorities were notified. On Monday, the man was picked up by the Israeli authorities without any information or warning about where he was to be taken and was later found in Ramallah. His test results are yet to be released and there is no confirmation of whether he is suffering from a coronavirus infection. In our next story, a new bail application for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is said to be filed on Wednesday over concerns of coronavirus spreading in British prisons. Lawyers representing Assange have expressed their concerns after two cases of COVID-19 have been reported in the last week from within prisons in the UK. The first coronavirus infection of a prisoner was reported in Manchester in the United Kingdom since then another prison inmate was reported with the infection in Surrey. Over a dozen other inmates have been kept in isolation by prison authorities. Public health experts have raised concerns of the mass spread and hundreds of avoidable deaths among prison inmates if preventive measures are not taken by the government. Estimates have suggested that UK prisons could see up to 800 deaths, which is nearly 1% of the British prisoners if the infections were to spread. Civil society groups and even ruling party politicians have asked for the early release of high-risk inmates like the elderly, the terminally ill or those with debilitating illnesses. Assange has been held at a high-security prison in Belmarsh which houses over 800 or so inmates as he stands trial for a US extradition request. He has been held in remand since September 2019. That's all we have in this episode of the International Daily Roundup. To know more about these stories visit our website peoplesdispatch.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Thanks for watching.