The number of coronavirus cases in Europe rose above the one million mark and by Sunday deaths exceeded a somber 100,000, but some countries say the charts indicate the number of new infections has peaked and are cautiously easing restrictions to return to normal life and reboot their economies.
As of Monday morning, Europe had 1,089,256 coronavirus cases and 101,836 deaths, with the five largest countries of Germany, France, the UK, Italy and Spain, accounting for over 80 percent of the cases.
In the European Union’s largest economy, Germany, Health Minister Jens Spahn was cautiously optimistic over the weekend, saying that the month-long lockdown has brought his country’s coronavirus outbreak under control, and since April 12, the number of cured patients has been consistently higher than that of new infections.
Germany will be able to rein in the debt incurred to manage the coronavirus pandemic if the economy improves in the second half of the year, Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said in an interview published on Sunday.
Scholz did not rule out the possibility of incurring additional debt beyond €156 billion ($169 billion) that was approved by the German parliament in late March, but he told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper that might not be necessary “if we manage to move the economic curve upwards again in the second half of the year”.
Italy, which saw the lowest number of deaths in a week, was also mulling its first easing of restrictions, with the current lockdown due to end on May 4.
While officials said a substantial increase in people’s movement should only be allowed once the number of new cases in a day falls below one percent, the onset of spring is making people impatient, which has prompted Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte to say that “nothing will change” just yet.
Health Minister Salvador Illa also said Spain had achieved its objective of “flattening the curve” of transmissions.
But Simon admitted the fall in the number of deaths from Saturday to Sunday can be explained by the lower registration of fatalities over the weekend. Such a drop is often followed by a rise at the start of the week.
Spanish authorities believe the country reached the peak of the pandemic on April 2 when they had counted 950 deaths in 24 hours. But they are not ready to recommend a lifting of the nationwide lockdown, one of the tightest in Europe.
In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Sunday during an inspection of a local hospital that he expected the epidemic to peak there on May 3. He said the country will have some 8,000 respirators by then and enough hospital beads to successfully fight the cresting wave of cases.
Title image: Public sanitation workers cleaning the Margaret Bridge over the Danube in downtown Budapest on Sunday, April 19. (MTI/Márton Mónus)
