Officials from Rome to Washington are urgently mapping out plans to loosen lockdowns and begin rebooting their economies even as the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic still rages across huge swaths of the globe.
The juggling act for policymakers will be to reopen without triggering a second wave of infections that would lead to a fresh round of lockdowns and yet more economic damage.
Even Italy, which has recorded the highest death toll from the virus, has been weighing its exit strategy after a moderating trend in new infections. And, in the US, President Donald Trump is again talking about getting people back to work. “We have to reopen somehow. We can’t go in shutdown mode for 20 months,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the Centre for Infectious Disease Research and Policy and professor at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis in the US.
Already, more than 1.6 million people are infected across the globe, putting healthcare systems under severe strain. As of Friday, more than 96 000 people had died. The experience of a car parts maker in Wuhan is one indication of just how onerous rebooting the global economy is going to be. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe warned this week that hospitals were reaching capacity as he declared a state of emergency in Tokyo and its surrounding regions. In a video call between the leaders late last month, Abe called for international coordination on antiviral drugs, and for all G20 governments to spend more to support their economies.
“We’ll probably have to restart activity fairly gradually and there may be subsequent periods of slower activity again,” he said during a virtual discussion hosted by the Brookings Institute on Tuesday. Peter Williams, chairperson of British clothing chain Superdry, said it was vital for retailers that consumer confidence recovered quickly.
The concern among health experts and the public is that, no matter how much you slow the rate of infection and in the absence of a vaccine, the virus will return in force once lockdowns are lifted.Read: Mike Ryan, head of the health emergencies programme at the World Health Organisation, said: “Once you raise the lockdown, you have to have an alternative method to suppress the virus – active case finding, testing, isolation, tracking of contacts and strong community education.
People would be encouraged to continue social distancing and those at high risk would be told to limit their time in public. If cases begin to rise again, restrictions would be tightened. Still, opening up relatively small economies like Norway or Austria is a far cry from rebooting countries on the scale of the US or even Italy.
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