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Customers toast while drinking at a terrace bar in Tarragona, Spain on Monday May 11, 2020 (AP)
LONDON: plastic space barriers and millions of More expensive appeared Monday on the streets of recently reopened cities in Europe, when France and Belgium emerged from the blockades, the Netherlands he sent the children to school and Spain allowed people to eat outside.
They all faced the delicate balance of trying to restart their battered economies without causing a second wave of coronavirus. infections. Fears of spikes of infection have been confirmed in recent days in Germany, where new groups were linked to three slaughterhouses; in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the virus started; and in South Korea, where a single nightclub customer was linked to 85 new cases.
In France, where restrictions They vary by region, depending on how badly affected they are, some schools and stores reopened, and some beauty salons were fully booked. But in Paris and elsewhere, restaurants and theaters remained closed, and masks were still mandatory in public.
In Germany, the gradual reduction of movement restrictions continued on Monday with the return of more children to classrooms, but authorities there and in France warned that an increase in the daily number of infections could lead to new restrictions.
About half of the 47 million Spaniards switched to a milder version of the country’s strict confinement, beginning to socialize, shop at small stores, and enjoy outdoor seating in restaurants and bars. But residents of the two largest cities, Madrid and Barcelona, remained under stricter controls.
In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that “anyone who cannot work from home should be actively encouraged to go to work.” Critics said the council was confusing and potentially dangerous, especially in a big city like London, where most people don’t own cars and where subway trains operate at a fraction of their capacity. In Australia, popular empty beaches are open again for exercise. Children from all over Sydney went back to school.
However, the first new infections in weeks in China’s ground zero provided a sobering reminder of the dangers of a second wave of cases. China reported on Sunday that a person had tested positive for the virus in Wuhan. There were five more cases on Monday. The new cases were all from the same residential complex.
And neighboring South Korea announced its highest number of infections for more than a month driven by a group in a Seoul nightlife district. Authorities reported 35 new cases as of midnight Sunday. The government has rejected new infections, stopping the reopening of schools and re-imposing restrictions on nightclubs and bars. It is also trying to locate 5,500 people who visited the popular Seoul district by verifying credit card transactions, cell phone records, and security camera footage.
