Parts of Europe hit hard by the deadly coronavirus pandemic took tentative steps towards resuming normal lives on Monday, with Germany allowing some shops to reopen and Norway restarting nurseries.
Governments across the world are debating how and when to ease the lockdowns that have kept more than half of humanity — 4.5 billion people — confined to their homes and crippled the global economy.
After emerging in the industrial central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year, the respiratory virus has claimed roughly 165,000 lives, with nearly two thirds of the victims in Europe.
But there were encouraging signs over the weekend in Europe with daily death tolls dropping in Italy, Spain, France and Britain.
In Germany, which been among the most successful in Europe to contain the disease and where authorities have declared it “under control”, smaller shops in some regions were to re-open on Monday.