(Reuters) – Here’s what you need to know about the coronavirus right now:
The big easing
More U.S. states prepare to ease coronavirus restrictions this week despite continued warnings from health experts that there is still too little diagnostic testing.
Colorado, Mississippi, Minnesota, Montana and Tennessee were set to join several other states in reopening businesses without the means to screen systematically for infected people who may be contagious but asymptomatic, and to trace their contacts with others they might have exposed.
Many merchants are worried about returning to work – but are doing so anyway because they need the money.
“I would stay home if the government encouraged that, but they’re not. They’re saying, ‘Hey, the best thing to do is go back to work, even though it might be risky,'” Royal Rose, 39, owner of a tattoo studio in Greeley, Colorado, said.
Britain holds back
Italy, Spain, Germany and Switzerland are among the countries in Europe starting to gradually wind down restrictions. Not so Britain, where Prime Minister Boris Johnson – back at work on Monday after recovering himself from COVID-19 – said it was still too risky.
Speaking outside his Downing Street residence a month and a day since testing positive for the virus which threatened his life, Johnson compared the disease to a street criminal that the British people had wrestled to the floor.
“I ask you to contain your impatience because I believe we are coming now to the end of the first phase of this conflict and in spite of all the suffering we have so nearly succeeded.”
The spread
The Reuters tracker shows that the number of confirmed infections worldwide will top three million in the coming hours.
(For an interactive graphic tracking the global spread, open https://tmsnrt.rs/3aIRuz7 in an external browser.)
Essential scarecrows
The daily lockdown walk has been brightened by the addition of scarecrows dressed as key workers in a village in southern England, as the community pays tribute to doctors, nurses, shop assistants and waste collectors in its own quirky way.
About 30 of the adult-sized stuffed dolls, complete with wigs and face masks, stethoscopes and surgical gloves, are propped up in front gardens in the village of Capel, about 30 miles south of London.
“We needed to cheer up the village and get people to have a laugh as they went around on their daily exercise,” said Sally Wyborn, who instigated the idea of the scarecrows.
(Compiled by Mark John and Karishma Singh, Editing by Angus MacSwan)
