Parts of Europe took more tentative steps towards normality on the weekend, after the devastation unleashed by the coronavirus pandemic.
With the worldwide death toll past 310,000 and the global economy reeling from the vast damage caused by lockdowns, the reopenings in some of the hardest-hit countries provided much-needed relief from the pandemic.
The French returned to the beach and Italy announced a resumption of European tourism with outbreaks in Europe slowing, but the rising number of fatalities in the US and Brazil were a grim reminder of the scale of the crisis, with more than 4.6 million infections reported globally.
With the Northern Hemisphere’s summer approaching, authorities are moving to help tourism industries salvage something from the wreckage.
Italy, for a long stretch the world’s worst-hit country, announced that EU tourists would be allowed to visit from June 3 and a 14-day mandatory quarantine would be scrapped.
“We’re facing a calculated risk in the knowledge that the contagion curve may rise again,” Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said during a televised address.
“We have to accept it otherwise we will never be able to start up again.”
In France, the first weekend after the strictest measures were lifted saw many venture out into the spring sunshine – and hit the beach.
In the Riviera city of Nice, keen swimmers jumped into the surf at daybreak.
“We were impatient because we swim here all year round,” said retiree Gilles, who declined to give his full name.
With the threat of a second wave of infections on their minds, authorities in many countries have asked people not to throng public spaces like beaches as they are made accessible again.
Officials in parts of England on Saturday warned people to stay away from newly reopened beauty spots and avoid overcrowding.
Germany also saw the latest in a growing wave of anti-lockdown protests in many parts of the world, with rallies in major cities bringing together conspiracy theorists, anti-vaccine activists and other extremists.
There were similar protests in France, Switzerland and Poland.
Emergency teams raced to prevent a coronavirus “nightmare” in the world’s largest refugee settlement after the first confirmed cases in a sprawling city of shacks housing nearly a million Rohingya.
There have long been warnings the virus could race like wildfire through the cramped, sometimes sewage-soaked alleys of the network of 34 camps in southeast Bangladesh.
Singapore has rolled out a mobile swab station as it seeks to test the more than 300,000 foreign workers living in dormitories in the city-state.
The specially-equipped ambulance can be swiftly deployed and allows health care workers to carry out swab tests on people as they stand outside the vehicle.
Japan’s health minister said the nation will conduct antibody testing from next month for about 10,000 people.
The test results should help experts better understand the extent of the coronavirus’s spread in Japan, with local media reporting it may also shed light on whether “herd immunity” can be achieved.
Since emerging late last year, the coronavirus has whipped up a catastrophic economic storm, which has left tens of millions unemployed in the US and many are wondering when a recovery will be possible.
With more than 88,000 deaths and 1.47 million confirmed coronavirus cases, the US is the worst-hit country on the planet, and the administration of President Donald Trump has faced intense criticism of the way it has handled the crisis.
Former President Barack Obama took a swipe at the response to the pandemic, telling graduates at a virtual commencement ceremony that many leaders today “aren’t even pretending to be in charge” – a remark widely regarded as a rare rebuke of his successor.
Trump is keen to reopen the US economy – the world’s largest – despite warnings from experts that infections could flare up again if social distancing measures are eased too quickly.
Forty-eight of the 50 US states have now eased lockdown rules to some extent.
Much like Trump and his political allies, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is also keen to end lockdowns, which he claims have unnecessarily damaged the South American nation’s economy over a disease he has dismissed as “a little flu”.
But the virus has continued its deadly march in Brazil, where the death toll passed 15,000 on Saturday and it became the country with the fourth-largest coronavirus caseload with 230,000 infections.