Brussels (AFP)

The European Union on Wednesday called on its members to reopen their internal borders to facilitate tourism, despite the continuation of the pandemic of new coronavirus, which has claimed the lives of more than 292,000 people on the planet, with the balance sheets starting to rise again. in several countries and which seem clearly underestimated in others.

The European Commission is seeking to prevent a sinking of the tourism sector, crucial for the EU economy since it represents 10% of its GDP and 12% of jobs, much more in certain southern European countries, such as Italy and Spain, already very bereaved by the coronavirus.

"This is not going to be a normal summer ... But if we all make an effort, we will not have to spend the summer stranded at home or the summer will not be completely lost for the tourism industry", said the Commission's Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager at a press conference in Brussels.

On Wednesday, Germany has already announced plans to lift traffic restrictions at its borders in mid-June, adding that its French, Austrian and Swiss neighbors have the same goal. Its borders with Luxembourg will be completely open from Saturday.

And Austria announced the restoration from June 15 of free movement on its common border with Germany, closed since mid-March.

- "Live again" -

An important sign of an improvement in the situation, the German football championship will resume on Saturday, while its English, Spanish and Italian competitors are soon preparing to imitate it.

France and Spain, for their part, have further relaxed the containment measures for their populations, tested by weeks of isolation.

Some of the French schoolchildren have taken or are about to return to the classrooms, and coastal beaches could reopen this weekend for walks or sports.

In Spain, many of them experienced the joy of going back to bars, with strict hygiene measures. "We are always afraid of catching the virus, of infecting our loved ones, but we have to go out on the street, we have to live again," said Marcos Rodriguez in Tarragona.

But the Spanish authorities decided on Tuesday that people arriving in Spain from abroad would be subject to a 14-day quarantine.

Faced with a global health disaster that has affected more than 4.2 million people, according to a balance sheet of official sources, no doubt largely underestimated, all countries are trying to find the difficult balance between measures intended to halt the spread of the disease. and decisions to revive economies affected by an unprecedented crisis.

- Warning in the United States -

White House chief immunologist Dr. Anthony Fauci warned Tuesday of the potentially "very serious" consequences of too hasty economic recovery in the United States, the country most affected by Covid disease -19 (more than 82,000 dead).

The daily toll has gone up again in the United States, with nearly 1,900 additional deaths in 24 hours.

Health officials in Los Angeles County, the country's second largest city, said containment measures would likely remain in effect until the end of July, unless "dramatic changes" are made.

The White House itself was not spared the coronavirus: the American vice-president Mike Pence, whose close collaborator was tested positive, decided to keep his distances from Donald Trump "for a few days".

The picture is also getting darker in Brazil, which recorded its worst daily toll Tuesday, with 881 deaths linked to coronavirus. The country now has more than 12,400 deaths from the virus, according to the Ministry of Health.

Although Russia became Tuesday, according to a count of AFP, the second country in the world in number of contaminations (more than 232,000), President Vladimir Putin also gave the green light to a start of deconfinement, according to the epidemiological situation in each region.

But Moscow, the main focus of the epidemic, extended its confinement until May 31.

- Unexplained deaths in Nigeria -

In China, the vast agglomeration of more than 4 million inhabitants of Jilin, in the province of the same name bordering North Korea, placed on Wednesday its inhabitants in partial containment after the appearance of new cases of coronavirus raising fears of a second epidemic wave in the country where the Covid-19 pandemic started.

The fight against the coronavirus, by disrupting health coverage, could have devastating indirect effects in poor countries as the death of 6,000 children every day in the next six months, warned UNICEF on Wednesday, calling for urgent action. .

Africa has so far been relatively unscathed by the pandemic, which has officially left less than 2,500 dead, but there are increasing indications that this toll is greatly underestimated.

Thus, the sharp increase in the number of mostly unexplained deaths in northern Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, raises fears of a strong spread of the coronavirus in this region among the poorest in the world.

In the past month, Kano, the most populous city in the north with nearly 10 million inhabitants, which officially records only 32 deaths from Covid-19 disease, has witnessed hundreds of deaths, including especially among the elderly.

"When Kano sneezes, the whole North catches the flu," warns Dr. Ibrahim Musa, a doctor in the region. "They don't realize the upcoming earthquake."

burs-thm / sg

© 2020 AFP