Lockdown: Nations offer a wide mix of solutions
pressures mounted on Sunday on governments to ease the economic pain of coronavirus lockdowns after protests from those fearing for their livelihoods, and authorities responded with a wide range of possible dates and solutions and a few emphatic ‘not yets’.
Shutdowns that began in China in late January and spread to Europe, the US and elsewhere have disrupted economic, social, cultural and religious life across much of the globe, plunging the world into its most painful economic slump since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Millions of workers have lost their jobs already, and many more fear that they are next.
With the arc of infection different in every nation, proposals have differed for coping with the virus that has claimed at least 160,000 lives over the past four months and for which there is still no vaccine. Some countries, like Britain, which is still deep in the middle of its outbreak, say it’s too soon to give definite lockdown easing dates.
In Germany, which has managed to significantly slow the rate of new infections since mid-March, authorities are allowing most small stores to reopen on Monday. The head of an association representing German cities said many people would likely welcome the opportunity to shop in person again.
“But we’re not expecting a huge rush now,” Helmut Dedy told Germany’s dpa news agency. “The stores that are reopening will be just as accessible a week later.”
After six weeks of being stuck inside, Spanish authorities say children will be allowed to leave their homes beginning April 27. Spain imposed one of the strictest lockdowns in Europe, helping drive the daily infection rate from over 20 per cent down to 2 per cent for a country whose 20,000 fatalities are only surpassed by the United
States and Italy. Albania plans to let its mining and oil industries reopen on Monday, along with hundreds of businesses including small retailers, food and fish factories, farming and fishing.
The death toll in the US is nearing 40,000 with more than 735,000 confirmed infections, and the global case count has passed 2.3 million, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University of national health reports. The actual extent of the pandemic is likely to be significantly higher due to mild infections that are missed, limited testing, problems counting the dead and some nations’ desires to underplay their outbreaks.
The International Monetary Fund expects the global economy to contract 3 per cent this year — a far bigger loss than 2009’s 0.1 per cent after the global financial crisis.
Still, many governments are resisting pressure to abruptly relax the virus lockdowns. “We must not let down our guard until the last confirmed patient is recovered,” South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in said on Sunday.
The country, which was hit early on by the virus, announced that new infections fell on Sunday to eight, from a peak of 909 on February 29.
British officials, who reported 888 new hospital deaths from the virus on Saturday, said they’re not ready to ease lockdown measures. —
We must not let down our guard until the last confirmed patient is recovered. Moon Jae-in
South Korea’s President