Italy to reopen borders; Russia toll breaks record
ROME/MOSCOW: Italy is set to open businesses from bars to hairdressers on Monday, while government decided to unblock national borders and allow citizens to move freely within the country starting June 3.
Italians will be allowed full free movement, according to a government decree published on Saturday. The statement confirmed that some businesses will reopen on Monday, while it stopped short of allowing social gatherings. Portugal, Spain and Greece also eased some of their measures earlier, signalling optimism that southern Europe’s scarred economies can start to recover from the Covid-19 crisis.
Italy said its daily virus-linked deaths fell to 242 on Friday from 262 a day earlier, and new cases was the lowest in four days. Though responsibility was handed to Italy’s regions, the government can reimpose restrictions, including local lockdowns, to control any new outbreaks.
Russia on Saturday recorded its highest daily death toll yet from the coronavirus, though new cases fell to the lowest level in two weeks.
Russia is second in the world to the US with 272,043 cases, of which 9,200 were from Saturday, the lowest number since May 2. But the number of deaths announced on Saturday for the last 24 hours was the highest yet in Russia, at 119.
Critics have cast doubt on Russia’s low mortality rate, accusing authorities of underreporting deaths in order to play down the scale of the crisis.
The total number of officially confirmed deaths is now 2,537, lower than a number of other countries with fewer cases.
Russian health officials say one of the reasons the count is lower is that only deaths directly caused by the virus are being included.
Slovenia opened its borders on Friday after declaring an end to its epidemic, despite new infections still being reported. “Today Slovenia has the best epidemic situation in Europe, which enables us to call off the general epidemic,” Prime Minister Janez Jansa said, two months after the epidemic was declared.