Pope Francis will not appear in St Peter’s Square, to avoid people gathering amid the coronavirus outbreak, the Vatican says.
His general audiences will also be streamed with no participants at papal morning Masses until 15 March.
The Pope has been suffering from a cold but it is not coronavirus.
What’s the latest in the US?
- The FBI says that one of its employees in San Francisco has tested positive for Covid-19. In a statement it said other workers at the small satellite office had been sent home and all known contacts of the infected person were being notified
- Florida reported two deaths on Friday – the first on the US east coast. They take the US death toll to 16 with more than 200 confirmed cases. The other fatalities have been in the west-coast states of California and Washington.
- The White House is facing continued criticism of its response to the crisis, in particular the delays in testing for the virus. President Donald Trump has signed an $8.3bn (£6.4bn) emergency bill but the government has admitted that it does not have enough testing kits. Irwin Redlener, director of Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness, described the response as “gross amateur-hour incompetence”. “We’ve done maybe 1,000 or more tests when South Korea has done 75,000-100,000 – this whole thing is out of control,” he told MSNBC
- A US Navy sailor has tested positive for the virus in Naples, Italy, Fox News reports
