PARIS, April 7 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Europe’s governments have begun to look ahead to the post-lockdown phase of their battle against Covid-19 as curves on the continent flatten.
Austria on Monday became the first EU country to publicly announce plans to lift its restrictions. “The aim is that from April 14 … smaller shops up to 400 square metres, as well as hardware and garden stores, can open again, under strict security conditions,” the chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, said.
If the government’s timetable goes to plan, larger shops could reopen on May 1 and hotels, restaurants and other services from mid-May, Kurz said, adding that “everything will depend” on whether citizens continue to obey draconian distancing rules this week and over the Easter break.
Denmark also announced plans to start reopening nurseries and primary schools from April 15 if the number of Covid-19 deaths and new cases remain stable.
“It will probably be a bit like walking the rope. If we stand still along the way we could fall and if we go too fast it can go wrong. Therefore, we must take one cautious step at a time,” said the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, adding that a ban on large social gatherings would remain in place until at least August.
In Germany, the chancellor, Angela Merkel, said on Monday that the coronavirus pandemic was “the EU’s biggest test since its foundation” and thanked Germans for following the government’s instructions. But she added that it was still too early to set a date for lifting the country’s lockdown.
However, as Germany reported its fourth consecutive daily drop in cases, a leaked interior ministry document revealed a list of measures that officials seemingly believe might allow public life to gradually resume after the end of the country’s lockdown, currently scheduled for April 19.
The measures include an obligation to wear masks in public, limits on public gatherings, and mechanisms to allow more than 80% of people an infected person has been in contact with to be traced within 24 hours of diagnosis, permitting schools to reopen on a regional basis and strict border controls to be relaxed.
Like several EU countries, Austria and Germany look set to rely on mobile phone apps to trace citizens’ movements and warn them of potential risks of infection, prompting the bloc’s data protection supervisor on Monday to urge the development of a single, more secure pan-European app.
Spain, which has recorded the second highest Covid-19 death toll in the world so far after Italy, also reported a fourth consecutive fall in its daily death tally as well as falls in hospital admissions and critical care cases.
While strict confinement rules introduced on March 14 will remain in force until April 26, the government announced on Monday that it is planning to widen coronavirus testing to include people without symptoms, as a first step towards slowly easing the lockdown.
“We are preparing ourselves for de-escalation, for which it will be very important to know who is contaminated,” said the foreign minister, Arancha González Laya.
Italy on Monday reported 636 deaths, roughly 100 more than the previous day, but its infection rate slowed again, with the number of new positive cases rising by under 2,000, or 2.1%. The health minister, Roberto Speranza, told the daily La Repubblica that the coming period was going to be hard.
“There are difficult months ahead,” he said. “Our task is to create the conditions to live with the virus,” at least until a vaccine arrives.
The daily death toll in France, which went into lockdown later than Spain and Italy, also fell on Sunday, to 357 from 441 in the previous 24 hours. The health ministry said hospital and intensive care admissions were also declining, but warned people it was still essential to continue respecting strict confinement measures.
According to the Johns Hopkins University tracker, the coronavirus has reached more than 210 countries and territories around the world, infecting 1.28 million people and killing more than 70,000. Nearly half of the world’s population is living in some form of lockdown.
Among other developments:
- Norway said it considered its outbreak “under control” but cautioned it was too early to say if restrictions could be lifted.
- Russia also recorded its biggest daily jump with 954 new cases of the disease. — NNN-AGENCIES
