ISLAMABAD: Spanish children were allowed outside on Sunday for the first time in six weeks as countries eased lockdown measures in a bid to slowly reopen economies gutted by the coronavirus pandemic that has infected nearly three million people worldwide.
Governments from France to Italy and the United States are starting to peel back severe restrictions that have kept more than half of humanity indoors for weeks on end. Coronavirus cases around the world topped 2.9 million Sunday and deaths crossed 205,000 mark, well over half of them in Europe, according to international media reports.
The daily toll in Western countries appeared to be levelling off and even falling in hard-hit countries, with numbers out of Italy, Spain and France stabilising in recent days.
Governments are plotting a gradual reversal of lockdown measures to avoid a sudden rush back to normal life -- and the risk of a second wave of infections -- amid warnings from the World Health Organisation that recovered people might not be immune to reinfection.
Spanish families embraced new rules allowing children outside for the first time since mid-March, with kids hopping on bicycles and scooters on the streets of Madrid -- some wearing small masks and gloves.
"They are super excited, very, very impatient. They were up at 6:30 am, saying ´We are going out, We are going out!´," Inmaculada Paredes said, readying to take her seven- and four-year-old kids outdoors.
Six-year-old Ricardo said it was "very good" to be out after a runaround with his younger sister in the city. "We played hide and seek, we raced. We found a ladybug that was lost and we put it in among the ants," he said. Under the revised rules, children are allowed out once per day between 9:00 am and 9:00 pm, but cannot venture more than one kilometre from their homes
The new rules were rolled out as the death toll in the hard-hit country dropped to 288 people on Sunday, the lowest since March 30.
With more than 23,000 fatalities, Spain has the third highest death toll in the world after Italy´s over 26,000 and more than 54,000 in the United States.
Other hard-hit countries across Europe are also starting to look toward a slow crawl back to normality. Italy on Sunday said schools would reopen in September, while many business could resume work next week, and France was expected to unveil details of its de-confinement plan tomorrow (Tuesday).
Belgium said schools and businesses will reopen from mid-May, while shops in Germany started to reopen earlier this week. And in Britain, where more than 20,000 have died, Prime Minister Boris Johnson was planning a return to work today (Monday) after being treated in hospital for the virus, including three days in intensive care.
But his government resisted calls to ease nationwide restrictions, even as it reported its lowest daily death toll since March 31 on Sunday with 413 new fatalities.
Saudi Arabia on Sunday said it would partially lift its 24-hour curfew, allowing malls and retailers to open their doors during certain hours. But the kingdom said it would maintain a round-the-clock lockdown in the Muslim holy city of Makkah.
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly said he wants to resume business in the world´s biggest economy, even as medical advisors have cautioned against easing lockdown too soon or too fast.
While new reported cases appear to have plateaued at about 80,000 a day, the world remains in wait as companies and governments race to develop treatments and, eventually, a vaccine for the virus.
Some governments are studying measures such as "immunity passports" as one way to get people back to work after weeks of shutdowns that have roiled the global economy.
Meanwhile, France reported a big fall in its coronavirus death toll on Sunday, with 242 deaths in 24 hours, a drop of more than a third on the previous day.
The epidemic has now claimed 22,856 lives in the country since the beginning of March, health officials said. The deaths in hospitals -- 152 -- was the lowest daily toll in five weeks, they said, while 90 people died in nursing and care homes.
After more than a month of controversy, a UN Security Council buffeted between the United States, China and Russia is finally expected this week to adopt its first resolution on the coronavirus pandemic, amid calls for intensified international cooperation.
A hopeless task? A wake-up call for multi-lateralist forces crushed by resurging nationalism? Or perhaps a first step toward a geopolitical reorganisation and the recasting of an international body founded in 1945 with the express mission of preventing and containing global crises?
Diplomats and experts were less than sanguine.
Gandhi once said that being late can itself be an "act of violence," one ambassador recalled, speaking on grounds of anonymity to express impatience with the UN´s top body for its embarrassing silence in the face of the worst global crisis since World War II.
The Security Council has conferred only once on the pandemic, and that was in virtual session -- a videoconference held April 9 at the initiative of Germany and Estonia.
The current resolution, jointly proposed by Tunisia and France, calls for "enhanced coordination among all countries," a "cessation of hostilities" and a "humanitarian pause" in countries in conflict.
The resolution aims to support the efforts of Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and of several UN agencies struggling to contain the devastating political, economic and social consequences of the deadly virus.
The text is partly "a face-saving device that allows the Security Council to claim that it has not been entirely inactive," said Richard Gowan, UN director of the International Crisis Group, a centre for analysis. "But it does have some substantive benefits too."
Might the benefits of a resolution binding on all UN members be seen in crisis zones in Syria, Yemen or elsewhere in the Middle East? In Afghanistan, Colombia or Africa?
"A global ceasefire is very laudable, but the challenge is how you translate that into actions in individual country context," another ambassador said.
The French-Tunisian text merges two proposals negotiated in parallel over several weeks, one under Tunis´s leadership among the 10 non-permanent members of the Security Council (the "E10") and the other by France among the five permanent members (the "P5").
But while the two texts share the goal of improved cooperation and support for widespread cease-fires, neither achieved complete unity in its Security Council bloc, diplomats said.
The joint text is likely to undergo several amendments before being put to a vote at a date as yet uncertain. But several diplomats described it as "decisive," and insisted it will be voted on this week.