© BELGA – A clothing store owner in Austria reopens her boutique
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Deconfinement projects, reopening of stores and schools: Europe is cautiously loosening its restrictions against coronavirus while in the United States, Donald Trump displays his haste to restart the economy, even if the Covid-19 continues to sow death everywhere across the planet, with more than 131,000 deaths since its appearance in China in December.
> CORONAVIRUS in Belgium: the latest news
Americas
The United States pay the heaviest price, with 28,326 deaths for more than 637,000 cases. And they registered a new world record Wednesday with 2,569 deaths in 24 hours, according to the reference count of the Johns Hopkins university.
The number of coronavirus cases in Brazil is fifteen times higher than official figures, according to researchers who estimate that more than 300,000 people have been infected and who fear a massacre in the coming weeks. Brazil, the most affected country on a Latin American continent won by the global pandemic late compared to Asia and Europe, officially deplores 1,736 dead, according to the latest assessment, and awaits the peak of contamination in late April or early May.
EUROPE
Germany intends to reopen some stores soon and, from May 4, schools and high schools. Sports gatherings will remain banned in Germany until August 31.
Almost half of schoolchildren in Denmark found their classrooms on Wednesday after a month of closure.
Austria reopened its small non-essential businesses on Tuesday. The other stores should follow in early May, the restaurants in mid-May, with facilities to respect precautionary distances. Professional athletes will be able to resume the path of training before the end of April.
Italy, the second most affected country in the world with 21,645 dead, has also reopened some shops.
In Spain, the government is only beginning to talk about the gradual lifting of one of the strictest confinements in Europe, which should be extended beyond April 25 while perhaps being relaxed. In Spain (18,579 dead), only adults can go out to the supermarket, pharmacy or walk a dog.
The UK (12,868 dead) should rule on Thursday on a possible extension of the confinement. Overwhelmed by the heavy daily reports, the citizens of the English Channel take hold of any comforting news, such as the healing of a 106-year-old great-grandmother or the initiative of a veteran.
The situation in France (17,167 dead), which is preparing its plan for progressive deconfinement from May 11, also seemed to be moving in the right direction with hospitalizations down Wednesday for the first time since the start of the epidemic. “It’s a first drop and you have to salute it“said number two of the Ministry of Health, Jérôme Salomon. But NGOs have denounced” worse health conditions than in South Sudan “in slums in the Parisian suburbs.
AFRICA
If Europe and the United States are now talking about deconfinement, countries like the DR Congo (21 dead) are still on the alert. The Congolese authorities fear indeed “the worst” in early May in Kinshasa where the epidemic “is entering an exponential phase”. Schools, places of worship, bars and nightclubs are closed but the municipal markets remain open, with sellers and buyers crowding together without respecting the required distance meter.
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