Pressures mount to relax lockdowns

PRESSURES mounted yesterday 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 January and spread to Europe, the US and elsewhere have disrupted economic, social, cultural and religious life across the globe, plunging the world into its most painful economic slump since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Tens of millions of workers have lost their jobs already, and millions 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.

But in Germany, which has managed to significantly slow the rate of new infections since last month, most small stores can reopen today. 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 said.

After six weeks of being stuck inside, Spanish authorities say children will be allowed to leave their homes from April 27.

Spain imposed one of the strictest lockdowns in Europe, helping drive the daily increase in confirmed infections from over 20% down to 2% for a country whose 20 000 virus deaths are only surpassed by the US and Italy.

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 International Monetary Fund expects the global economy to contract 3% this year, a far bigger loss than 2009 s 0.1% after the global financial crisis.

Still, many governments are resisting pressures to abruptly relax lockdowns.

“We must not let down our guard until the last confirmed patient is recovered,” South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in said yesterday.

The country, which was hit early on by the virus, announced that new infections fell yesterday to eight, from a peak of 909 on February 29.

British officials, who reported 888 new hospital deaths from the virus, said they’re not ready to ease lockdown measures. Minister Michael Gove said Britain still needs to develop its testing and contact tracing programme, beef up the National Health Service and make sure that infection and death rates have fallen.

“It’s only when we have all those measures in place that we can be confident about relaxing some of the measures,” Gove told the BBC yesterday, adding that pubs and restaurants “will be among the last” to leave the lockdown, which is now in place until May 7.

UK health experts fear that Britain could eventually have the highest virus death toll in Europe.

In the US, supporters of President Donald Trump protested in several states on Saturday, ignoring social distancing and stay-at-home orders to demand that governors end controls on public activity. They were goaded on by Trump tweets.

Trump is pushing to relax the US lockdown by May 1, a plan that hinges partly on more testing.

Texas, Indiana and some other states have announced plans to allow some retailing and other activity to resume. Florida and South Carolina have reopened beaches, with some drawing noticeable crowds.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who has criticised the federal response as inadequate, rejected pressure to reopen businesses. New York’s daily death toll fell below 550 on Saturday for the first time in two weeks, but Cuomo said hospitals are still reporting nearly 2 000 new patients a day.

“We are not at a point when we are going to be reopening anything immediately,” Cuomo said.

Hundreds of people protested on Saturday in major Brazilian cities against lockdowns. President Jair Bolsonaro, who has downplayed the threat of the disease and criticised shutdowns imposed by state governors, said he would recommend reopening the country’s borders with Paraguay and Uruguay.