INDIA DEATH TOLL TOPS 100K AS NATION MOVES TOWARD REOPENING

More than 100,000 people in India have died from the coronavirus, the government said Saturday, even as officials plan to lift more restrictions in hopes of reviving the crippled economy.

India’s health ministry reported 1,069 new COVID-19 deaths, bringing the official total to 100,842, though experts say the true toll is probably much higher. Until Saturday, only the United States and Brazil had reported more than 100,000 deaths from the virus.

At 6.4 million, India’s official caseload is the secondhighest in the world, surpassed only by the United States, which has more than 7.3 million cases. India’s death and infection rates have climbed in recent months, with September alone accounting for more than 40 percent of its cases and about a third of its deaths.

The numbers have fallen somewhat since mid-september but remain high. Over the past week, India reported almost twice as many new cases as the U.S. did. And experts suspect that many COVID-19 fatalities in India have gone unreported.

“Actual number of deaths is much higher,” said Dr.

Anant Bhan, a health researcher at Yenepoya University in southern India. “But how much higher it is, that is difficult to know.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government imposed a harsh nationwide lockdown in March, a move that many experts say was poorly planned, devastating the economy while failing to stop the virus’ spread.

Now, despite the climbing numbers, officials are lifting restrictions in hopes of easing the economic suffering. Cinemas will be allowed to reopen with limited capacity this month, for example, and some states are expected to reopen schools.

Elsewhere, governments were locking down further to try to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

Madrid awoke Saturday to its first day under a partial lockdown, with police controlling travel in and out of the Spanish capital as the city and its suburbs have become Europe’s biggest hot spot in the second wave of the coronavirus.

Spain’s national government ordered two weeks of new restrictions that started at 10 p.m. Friday despite reluctance from regional officials.

The measures prohibit all nonessential trips in and out of the capital and nine of its suburbs — affecting around 4.8 million people. Restaurants must close at 11 p.m. and shops at 10 p.m., and both must limit occupancy to 50 percent of their capacity.

In Greece, doctors took to the streets with their families and a few friends Saturday not to protest, but to debunk misinformation about face masks circulating during the coronavirus pandemic.

A few dozen people fastwalked and ran more than a mile through central Thessaloniki while wearing face masks and then measured their oxygen and carbon dioxide levels, finding them all normal.

Opponents of mandatory face mask use have spread the claim that wearing face coverings makes people short of breath and actually is bad for their health. Doctors specializing in respiratory medicine wanted to prove them wrong.

New coronavirus cases, but not deaths, have surged in Greece since early August, with nearly 80 percent of the country’s more than 19,300 confirmed cases reported since then. With the summer tourism season now over, authorities say people not wearing masks and failing to keep social distancing are to blame for the surge.