As WHO warns no evidence exists to suggest people can’t catch Covid-19 twice, India, Belgium and Greece among latest countries to ease lockdowns

The global toll from Covid-19 passed 200,000 on Saturday, with over 2.8 million people infected, as the WHO warned against issuing “immunity passports” because there is no evidence people who recovered from the disease are protected against a second infection.

It took more than three months after the coronavirus first emerged for deaths from the disease to pass 100,000, a grim milestone that was reached on 10 April. It took just over two weeks for that toll to double, and worldwide the number of confirmed infections is creeping towards 3 million.

Pressure is mounting on authorities to bring socially and economically costly lockdowns to an end, but most governments are acting only after they believe the virus is under control in their territory.

India, Greece and Belgium were the latest countries to announce a tentative easing of restrictions, but said these first steps can be reversed if cases start to rise again.

The Belgian prime minister, Sophie Wilmès, said it was “time to look to the future” as she announced that outdoor sports will be permitted and certain shops including garden centres will be allowed to lift the shutters from 4 May.

A week later, all shops will reopen and some school classes will recommence, with the wearing of masks will be mandatory on public transport. If the country has avoided a second wave of coronavirus infections, restaurants could open in June.

“We can do (this) because the figures show that we were able to slow down the spread of Covid-19 in Belgium. But the virus hasn’t disappeared yet. It’s still present and dangerous for the population,” Wilmès said.

In Greece reopening is expected from Monday 4 May, when small shops, hairdressers, barbers and beauticians will be to go back to work again. “The objective of the confinement measures is not to remain in a glass bowl,” government spokesman Stelios Petsas said earlier this week. “The objective is to take back our lives.”

The centre right administration took a “hard and early” approach to enforcing restrictions, amid fears of Greece’s austerity-hit health system being quickly overwhelmed. As a result Greece, to date, has had a sum total of 2,490 confirmed coronavirus cases and 130 fatalities.

However, Hong Kong’s top epidemiologist has warned against easing lockdowns in Europe too soon, saying “you need a sledgehammer” to bring down the rate of infections first.

Gabriel Leung, the dean of medicine at the University of Hong Kong, told Der Spiegel that lockdowns will be “a marathon, not a sprint”, and that the world needs to learn to live with the coronavirus, tightening and easing restrictions as outbreaks emerge.

“Containment has failed everywhere,” Leung said. “What we need is suppression, or better: cycles of suppression and lift, probably many of them,” he said. He added that measures needed to be tuned to the “surge capacity” of national health systems.

One region that appears to have been relatively successful so far in containment efforts is Africa, with strict lockdowns across the continent apparently halting the spread of the virus and staving off a feared spike in infections.

South Africa will begin lifting lockdown restrictions from 1 May although people will have to wear face masks in public when they go out. Nigerian state governors have also asked President Muhammadu Buhari to approve the compulsory use of face masks in public as confirmed cases rise.

South and Central America by contrast are experiencing a significant crisis, with Brazil emerging as a major epidemic hotspot. Cases of Covid-19 are overwhelming hospitals, morgues and cemeteries, even as President Jair Bolsonaro insists it is a relatively minor disease.

Medical officials in Rio de Janeiro and at least four other major cities have warned that their hospital systems are on the verge of collapse, or already too overwhelmed to take any more patients, the AP reported.

In Manaus, the biggest city in the Amazon, officials said a cemetery has been forced to dig mass graves because there have been so many deaths. Workers have been burying 100 corpses a day, triple the pre-virus average of burials.

After global incredulity at US President Donald Trump’s suggestion that ingesting or injecting bleach could prevent or cure coronavirus, which he later disowned as “sarcasm”, the search for cures or prophylactics continues.

The French government is limiting the sale of products containing nicotine after reports from a Paris hospital that it may reduce the risk of catching the coronavirus.

Described by the French health authorities as “just a hypothesis”, clinical trials of nicotine patches are to be carried out, but in order to prevent people self-medicating a new decree declared that pharmacies were instructed to limit the sale of products containing nicotine - patches, chewing gum and lozenges - to one month’s supply.

As the international debate about the origins and spread of the virus continues, Reuters has reported that China sought to block a European Union report alleging that Beijing was spreading disinformation about the coronavirus outbreak.

The report was eventually released, albeit just before the start of the weekend Europe time and with some criticism of the Chinese government rearranged or removed, a sign of the balancing act Brussels is trying to pull off as the coronavirus outbreak scrambles international relations.

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