BRUSSELS New coronavirus clusters have surfaced around the world as nations struggle to balance reopening economies with preventing a second wave of infections and a top world health official warned that “this virus may never go away.”
Authorities in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the pandemic first began late last year, reportedly were pressing ahead Wednesday to test all 11 million residents for the virus within 10 days after a handful of new infections were found.
In Lebanon, authorities reinstated a nationwide lockdown for four days beginning Wednesday night after a spike in reported infections and complaints from officials that social distancing rules were being ignored.
Worldwide, the virus has infected about 4.3 million people and killed more than 293,000, according to the Johns Hopkins tally. Experts say the actual numbers are likely far higher.
A top World Health Organization official, meanwhile, warned that it’s possible the new coronavirus may be here to stay.
“This virus may never go away,” Dr. Michael Ryan said in a press briefing Wednesday. Without a vaccine, he said it could take years for the global population to build up sufficient levels of immunity.
“I think it’s important to put this on the table,” he said. “This virus may become just another endemic virus in our communities,” he said, noting that other previously novel diseases like HIV have never disappeared, but that effective treatments have been developed.
The United Nations is forecasting that the coronavirus pandemic will shrink the world economy by 3.2% this year, the sharpest contraction since the Great Depression in the 1930s.
The U.N.’s mid-year report released Wednesday said COVID-19 is expected to slash global economic output by nearly $8.5 trillion over the next two years, wiping out nearly all gains of the past four years.
In January, the U.N. forecast a modest growth of 2.5 percent in 2020.
Despite the risk that loosening restrictions could lead to infection spikes, European nations have been seeking to restart cross-border travel, particularly as the summer holiday season looms for countries whose economies rely on tourists flocking to their beaches, museums and historical sites.
The European Union unveiled a plan to help citizens across its 27 nations salvage their summer vacations after months of coronavirus lockdown and resurrect Europe’s badly battered tourism industry. The pandemic has prompted border closures across Europe and shut down the lifeline of cheap local flights.
Austria said its border with Germany would reopen fully on June 15, and that border checks would be reduced starting Friday. Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said Austria was aiming for similar agreements with Switzerland, Liechtenstein and its eastern neighbors “as long as the infection figures allow.”
But he said it’s too early to talk about such measures with Italy, one of the world’s hardest-hit countries, with more than 220,000 infections and 30,000 deaths.
“There’s no perspective for opening the border soon,” Kurz told reporters Wednesday.
The tension in balancing people’s safety against the severe economic fallout is playing out across the world. Italy partially lifted lockdown restrictions last week only to see a big jump in confirmed coronavirus cases in its hardest-hit region. Pakistan reported 2,000 new infections in a single day after crowds of people crammed into local markets as restrictions were eased.
The situation remains unclear in some countries. The U.S. says Tanzania has not publicly released any data on COVID-19 in two weeks. The World Health Organization also has expressed worry about Tanzania, whose president has questioned his own government’s virus testing and refused to close churches in the belief that the virus can’t survive in the body of Christ. A new U.S. Embassy statement warns that the risk of being infected in Tanzania’s commercial hub, Dar es Salaam, is “extremely high” and says many hospitals in the city have been overwhelmed.
China, the first nation to put a large number of citizens under lockdown and the first to ease those restrictions, has been strictly guarding against any resurgence. In January, it put the entire city of Wuhan and the surrounding region, home to more than 50 million people, under a strict lockdown. A cluster of six new cases recently emerged, the first local infections in Wuhan since before the lockdown was eased in early April.
Greece will allow the reopening of some beaches Saturday when a heat wave is expected to hit the country.
Slovakia’s Constitutional Court has suspended parts of legislation that gives health authorities a right to use data from mobile phone operators to trace people amid the outbreak of the coronavirus.
