Regional and political rifts are emerging in many countries over how fast to lift the lid on the coronavirus lockdowns as worries about economic devastation collide with fears of a second wave of deaths.
French mayors are resisting the government's call to reopen schools while Italian governors want Rome to ease lockdown measures faster.
As the British government prepares to re-open the economy, Scottish leader Nicola Sturgeon has warned that acting too fast could let the virus wreak havoc again.
"Any significant easing up of restrictions at this stage would be very, very risky indeed," Sturgeon said on Thursday.
The economic damage around the globe mounted.
In the US, nearly 3.2 million laid-off workers applied for unemployment benefits last week, the government announced, bringing the running total over the past seven weeks to 33.5 million. When the country's April unemployment rate comes out on Friday, it is expected to be as high as 16 per cent, a level not recorded since the Depression.
Neiman Marcus, the 112-year-old luxury retailer, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the first US department store chain to be toppled by the outbreak.
And the Bank of England projected that Britain's economy will shrink by 14 per cent this year, its biggest decline since 1706, when Europe was locked in the War of the Spanish Succession.
In the UK, where the official death toll stands at more than 30,000, second only to the United States, Prime Minister Boris Johnson was expected to ease some restrictions on economic and social activity starting next week.
Johnson said the government will act with "maximum caution" to prevent a second wave of infections.
Italian regional governors are pressing to open shops and restaurants, just days after the country began easing its two-month lockdown by allowing 4.5 million people to return to work in offices and factories.
Governors want to be allowed to present their own plans for reopening, tailored to the rate of infection and economic needs of their regions.
After an outcry from the country's Roman Catholic bishops, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte announced that public Masses will be allowed to resume on May 18.
In Spain, support for the government is crumbling after seven weeks of a strict lockdown, with some regions and opposition parties demanding an end to the state of emergency declared on March 14. The government argues that it is far too soon.
Some of Germany's 16 powerful state governments are more impatient than others to open up businesses such as restaurants and hotels. At a meeting on Wednesday with Chancellor Angela Merkel, it was agreed that state leaders would have wide leeway to decide when to open more sectors of the economy. They also will have to reimpose restrictions locally if infections rebound.
In Russia, where the number of new infections is growing fast, President Vladimir Putin delegated the enforcement of lockdowns and other restrictions to regional governments, leading to wide variations across the country.
Fractures are also evident in the US, where about half of the 50 states are easing their shutdowns, to the alarm of public health officials.
Many states have not put in place the robust testing and contact tracing that experts believe is necessary to detect and contain new outbreaks. And many governors have pressed ahead with re-opening before their states met one of the key benchmarks of a guideline set out by President Donald Trump's administration for re-opening - a 14-day downward trajectory in new infections.
Researchers recently doubled their projection of deaths in the US to about 134,000 through early August. So far the US has recorded more than 70,000 deaths and 1.2 million confirmed infections.
Worldwide, the virus has infected more than 3.6 million people and killed more than 750,000, according to a Johns Hopkins University tally, which experts say understates the dimensions of the pandemic because of limited testing, differences in counting the dead and concealment by some governments.
China, where the virus was first detected late last year, reported just two new cases on Thursday, both from overseas, and said the whole country now is at low risk of further infections. The country has reported no new deaths from COVID-19 in more than three weeks.
Australian Associated Press
