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“We remain in the eye of the coronavirus storm,” WHO regional director for Europe, Hans Kluge, told a news conference, noting that about half of worldwide confirmed cases were in Europe.

Kluge noted they had seen positive signs in terms of “declining numbers” in Spain, Italy, Germany, France, and Switzerland, AFP reported.

However, he said the “positive signals” in some countries were overshadowed by sustained or increased levels in other countries, such as Britain, Turkey, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia.

As some European countries have started to ease some of the restrictions put in place to curb the spread, Kluge urged countries to make sure that control mechanisms were in place.

“It is imperative that we do not let down our guard,” Kluge said.

Before easing restrictions, Kluge said countries needed to make sure evidence showed that transmission was under control.

Countries also needed to ensure that healthcare had the capacity “to identify, isolate, test, trace contacts, and quarantine.”

Kluge also stressed that risks needed to be minimized in high-vulnerability settings, such as retirement homes and areas where people live in crowded places.

Workplaces also needed to take preventative measures, and countries needed to manage importation risks, Kluge added.

If countries could not ensure these criteria, Kluge urged them to “please re-think.”

On Wednesday, Denmark became the first country in Europe to start reopening schools, while Finland lifted a travel blockade on the Helsinki region.

Austria, Italy, and Spain have also allowed some businesses to reopen.

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The National Health Commission said in a statement on Monday that 78 new asymptomatic cases had been identified as of the end of the day on Sunday, compared with 47 the day before.

Imported cases and asymptomatic patients, who show no symptoms but can still pass the virus to others, have become China’s chief concern in recent weeks after draconian containment measures succeeded in slashing the overall infection rate.

Hubei province, the original epicenter of the outbreak, accounted for almost half of the new asymptomatic cases, the provincial health authority said. A total of 705 people with asymptomatic cases were under medical observation around mainland China, Reuters reported.

The surge in asymptomatic cases, which China only began reporting last week, poses a worry as the Hubei provincial capital of Wuhan prepares to allow people to leave the city on April 8 for the first time since it was locked down in late January.

Hubei began easing travel curbs late last month, part of China’s wider effort to get the economy back on track even as it tries to prevent a second wave of infections.

Wuhan officials revoked the “epidemic-free” status of 45 residential compounds due to the emergence of asymptomatic cases and for other unspecified reasons, according to a report on Monday by the official Xinhua news agency.

“Epidemic-free” status allows people living in a compound in Wuhan to leave their homes for two hours at a time.

Mainland China has reported a total of 81,708 cases, with 3,331 deaths.

China has closed off its borders to foreigners as the virus spreads globally, though most imported cases have involved Chinese nationals returning from overseas.

Of the new cases showing symptoms, 38 were people who had entered China from abroad, compared with 25 a day earlier.

Of those, 20 had arrived in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang from neighboring Russia, the provincial government said. All were Chinese citizens who had flown from Moscow to Vladivostok, including 12 who were on the same April 2 flight and traveled to China by road.

Another possible source of infection is the roughly 1.6 million Chinese citizens who study overseas, many of whom have struggled to return home since Beijing cut international flights into the country.

Preparations are underway to arrange charter flights to bring home Chinese students studying in the United States, starting with the youngest, China’s embassy to the United States said.

One new locally transmitted infection was reported in the latest data, in the southern province of Guangdong, down from five a day earlier in the same province.

The new locally transmitted case, in the city of Shenzhen, was a person who had traveled from Hubei province, Guangdong provincial authorities said.

The Guangdong health commission raised the risk level for a total of four districts in the cities of Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Jieyang from low to medium late on Sunday.

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With the latest update of Johns Hopkins University’s COVID-19 tracker, the US has tallied 100,717 cases of the virus, surpassing Italy, the next hardest-hit country, by more than 14,000 patients. The US and Italy, both have now overtaken China, where the once has been the epicenter of coronavirus, as new infections on the mainland continue to flatline, RT reported.

The news of the US reaching the new milestone in the coronavirus pandemic comes after US President Donald Trump invoked the Defense Production Act to force automakers to manufacture life-saving ventilators for the COVID-19 patients who have developed severe complications from the illness.

In a bid to revitalize the US economy, badly crippled by the coronavirus lockdowns, that sent unemployment claims surging to the record high of over three million, Trump also signed a $2.2 trillion stimulus and relief bill on – passed by the House earlier on Friday.

The US, along with several other hardest-hit countries, including France and Italy, have turned to the military for help to push back against the COVID-19 spread. Friday also saw Trump signing an executive order greenlighting the call-up of up to one million reservists in the army, air force, and coast guard.

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India joined the ranks of Britain and other countries clamping down to hold back the virus as business activity collapsed from Japan to the United States at a record pace in March.

The highly contagious coronavirus has caused entire regions to be placed on lockdown. In some places soldiers are patrolling the streets to keep consumers and workers indoors, halting services and production and breaking supply chains.

“The global health crisis is rapidly morphing into a global recession, as there is a clear tension between preventing infections and ruining the economy,” said Edoardo Campanella, an economist at UniCredit Bank in Milan.

But Wall Street bounced from three-year lows as investors pin their hopes on the U.S. Senate passing a $2 trillion stimulus bill.

Confirmed coronavirus cases around the world exceeded 377,000 across 194 countries and territories as of early Tuesday, according to a Reuters tally, more than 16,500 of them fatal.

In Geneva, WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris said infections in the United States had greatly increased.

Over the previous 24 hours, 85 percent of new cases were in Europe and the United States, and of those, 40 percent were in the United States.

As of Monday, the virus had infected more than 42,000 people there, killing at least 559.

Asked whether the United States could become the new epicenter, Harris said: “We are now seeing a very large acceleration in cases in the U.S. So it does have that potential.”

Some U.S. state and local officials have decried a lack of coordinated federal action, saying that having localities act on their own has put them in competition for supplies.

President Donald Trump acknowledged the difficulty.

“The World Market for face masks and ventilators is Crazy. We are helping the states to get equipment, but it is not easy,” he tweeted.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Tuesday the government would impose a nationwide lockdown from midnight for 21 days.

Health researchers have warned that more than a million people in India could be infected with the coronavirus by mid-May, prompting the government to shut down all air and train travel, businesses and schools.

On Tuesday, Modi, leader of the world’s biggest democracy, went further, saying nobody would be allowed to leave their homes.

“The only way to save ourselves from coronavirus is if we don’t leave our homes, whatever happens, we stay at home,” Modi said.

India has so far reported 482 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and nine deaths.

OLYMPIC ORGANIZERS GIVE IN

Olympic Games organizers and the Japanese government had clung to the hope that the world’s biggest sporting event could go ahead but finally bowed to the inevitable to make Tokyo 2020 the latest and biggest victim of a ravaged sporting calendar.

After a call with International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the July 24-Aug. 9 event would be rescheduled for the summer of 2021 at the latest – as proof of victory over the coronavirus.

“President Bach said he is in agreement, 100%.”

It was the first time in the Olympics’ 124-year history that they had been postponed, though they were canceled outright three times during the two 20th-century world wars.

Of the top 10 countries by case numbers, Italy has reported the highest fatality rate, at around 10%, which at least partly reflects its older population. The fatality rate globally – the ratio of deaths to confirmed infections – is around 4.3%, though national figures can vary widely according to how much testing is done.

Britain, believed by experts to be about two weeks behind Italy in the outbreak cycle, on Tuesday began curbs on movement without precedent in peacetime after Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered the country to stay at home.

The streets of the capital were quiet as all but essential shops closed and people only went to work if it was unavoidable.

Johnson had resisted pressure to impose a full lockdown even as other European countries had done so, but was forced to change tack as projections showed the health system could become overwhelmed.

Meanwhile, China’s Hubei province, the original center of the outbreak, will lift curbs on people leaving the area, but other regions will tighten controls as new cases double due to imported infections.

The provincial capital Wuhan, which has been in total lockdown since Jan. 23, will lift its travel restrictions on April 8.

However, the risk from overseas infections appears to be on the rise, prompting tougher screening and quarantine measures in cities such as the capital Beijing.

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