Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has asked the nation's poor for forgiveness, as the economic and human toll from his 21-day nationwide lockdown deepens.

Modi apologised in his monthly radio address on Sunday: "I apologise for taking these harsh steps that have caused difficulties in your lives, especially the poor people."

Modi announced a three-week lockdown on the world's largest nation - population 1.3 billion people, 25% of which live below the poverty line - on March 25.

Jobless migrant labourers have been forced to flee cities and walk hundreds of kilometres to their native villages. "We will die of walking and starving before getting killed by corona," Aljeezera reported one as saying.

In the UK the first frontline health worker died overnight. Amged El-Hawrani died in Leicester after testing positive for COVID-19.

The NHS is preparing for its most difficult week ever as the pandemic continues to cause chaos across the country and the number of COVID-19 patients begins to reach unsustainable levels.

Chair of the British Association of Critical Care Nurses, Nicki Credland, said: "We are doing everything we possibly can, but we simply do not have enough intensive care nurses. We are going to have to accept we can't save everyone."

If that's not enough it's been claimed the UK missed out on 25,000 ventilators and 50 million coronavirus testing kits because the government did not act quickly enough.

Brits have been warned things will get worse before they get better and it could be another six months before life starts to return to normal

Then there's Sweden, emerging from a long, dark winter. As yet not too many people are elbow bumping much less self-isolating. Let's see how that works out for them.

Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous country, has so far resisted lockdowns but doctors, politicians and human rights commissioners are finding their voice. They now are calling on Indonesia's government to enact tighter movement restrictions as the death toll from coronavirus rose overnight.

At the other end of the scale, Ireland's health service is days away from releasing a voluntary phone-tracking app. It would alert users if someone they have been in contact with develops COVID-19.

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