Madrid (AFP)

Nearly a million inhabitants of the Madrid region will be asked Monday "to stay at home most of the time", while the United States is now approaching the highly symbolic bar of 200,000 deaths from the coronavirus.

They remain by far the most affected country in the world with 199,474 deaths to date according to the latest data released by the American University Johns Hopkins on the night of Sunday to Monday.

In India, the second country most affected by the pandemic, the Taj Mahal, an architectural jewel of Indo-Islamic art, will reopen after six months of closure, despite an outbreak of new contaminations.

In Europe, Spain on Friday unveiled strict restrictions on the freedom of movement of some 850,000 people in the Madrid region.

From Monday, they will only be able to leave their neighborhood for basic reasons such as going to work, going to the doctor or bringing their children to school.

"It is true that we cannot close any door because obviously the virus is an unknown agent (...) but I believe that we now have the tools (...) to be able to contain and bend the curve" of contagions, he added.

However, some remain skeptical.

"We have the impression that we are being made fun of: we can continue to go and work in other areas that are not confined at the risk of increasing transmission, and we can also infect ourselves inside our zone, ”denounced Bethania Perez, a 31-year-old nurse, during a demonstration against the new measures.

- "PandEmmys" evening -

In the United States, the stars of the TV series attended Sunday from their living room or their bedroom at the evening of the Emmy Awards, equivalent of the Oscars for the small screen in the United States, renamed "PandEmmys" by the presenter because of the exceptional context linked to the virus.

Catherine O'Hara, crowned "best actress" in a comedy series for "Schitt's Creek", was thus given the golden statuette from the hands of a man wearing a full body suit of biological protection.

In India, where the Taj Mahal, India's iconic monument, reopens Monday after six months of coronavirus-related shutdown, the government is gradually loosening the stranglehold to breathe new life into the economy, although the country is currently recording nearly 100,000 additional new cases every day.

"In India, but also around the world, a weariness is setting in with the extreme measures taken to counter the advance of the coronavirus", explains to AFP Gautam Menon, professor of physics and biology at Ashoka University who s 'expects an increase in cases.

- Strong increase in Lebanon -

The pandemic has killed at least 957,948 people around the world since the end of December, according to a report established by AFP on Sunday at 11:00 GMT.

The situation seems particularly worrying in Belgium, where the number of positive cases crossed 100,000 on Sunday, in France, where more than 10,000 new cases were identified in 24 hours, or in Lebanon, where the number of contaminations has jumped since the explosion on August 4 at the port of Beirut.

"I couldn't sleep last night. The numbers of the coronavirus are shocking," Dr. Firass Abiad, director of the Rafic Hariri University Hospital in Beirut, warned on Twitter.

Although an increase was to be expected, "the sharp rise in deaths, including that of an 18-year-old young man, was terrible news," he added.

In Israel, a country that had been reconfined since Friday, several thousand demonstrators were authorized to demonstrate in Jerusalem on Sunday evening to demand the departure of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, indicted for corruption and accused of mismanaging the health crisis.

This generalized reconfinement planned for at least three weeks arouses the discontent of a large part of the population.

But for Prince Charles, heir to the British crown, the pandemic must above all act as a "warning that we cannot ignore" the threats posed by climate change on the planet.

"The (environmental) crisis has existed for too many years - denounced, denigrated and denied," he warned on Sunday.

"It is now becoming a general disaster that will eclipse the impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic."

© 2020 AFP