Britain not relaxing curbs yet; Germany starts partial easing

LONDON • Prime Minister Boris Johnson is resisting pressure to ease Britain's coronavirus lockdown too soon, fearing a second wave of the pandemic could hit the country, a person familiar with the matter said.

Mr Johnson, who has yet to return to work after being struck by Covid-19 himself, spoke with colleagues including his deputy, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, late last Friday to express caution, according to the person, who asked not to be identified.

The government is facing calls to lift curbs on movement that have brought the British economy to a near halt and triggered a surge in furloughs and welfare applications.

Last Thursday, Mr Raab extended the lockdown for three weeks amid signs that the outbreak is near or at its peak, but there is now an open debate in government about how and when to ease.

"The big concern is a second peak," Mr Johnson's spokesman James Slack said on a call with reporters yesterday.

Mr Slack said Mr Johnson is focusing on his recovery at Chequers, his country residence, and while he is receiving daily updates, he is not doing government work.

The government is also under increasing pressure to explain elements of its response, including delays in getting vital equipment and on testing health workers and others for the virus.

On Sunday, the government issued a furious defence of Mr Johnson's handling of the crisis.

After a report in the Financial Times criticising the procurement of ventilators and a Sunday Times story which suggested Mr Johnson had failed to take the virus seriously in its early stages, the government published two separate rebuttals, one 2,900 words long and the other 2,100 words long.

"This article contains a series of falsehoods and errors and actively misrepresents the enormous amount of work which was going on in government," the response to the Sunday Times began. It went on to question several of the assertions in the piece.

Mr Johnson had declared at the end of February that the virus was the government's top priority.

By Sunday afternoon, over 16,000 people with Covid-19 had died in hospitals. There were more than 120,000 confirmed cases.

There are signs that the number of deaths is levelling off, but officials said it was too early to call the peak of the virus.

Minister for the Cabinet Office Michael Gove, one of those leading the battle against the outbreak, confirmed the idea of a staged easing of the lockdown when it does come, saying the hospitality industry would be "among the last" to exit.

Meanwhile, some small shops in Germany reopened yesterday as the country took a cautious step towards returning to normal, though Chancellor Angela Merkel warned against complacency.

From florists to fashion stores, the majority of shops smaller than 800 sq m were allowed to welcome customers again across much of the country, in a first wave of scaling back lockdown measures introduced last month.

Still, Dr Merkel urged the public to maintain social distancing measures, voicing her "scepticism" and "huge concern" over the population's discipline.

Germany would see only in two weeks' time whether yesterday's partial relaxation of restrictions on public life pushes up the infection rate, Dr Merkel told reporters.

Germany has the fifth highest Covid-19 caseload - behind the United States, Spain, Italy and France - but has kept fatalities down thanks to early and extensive testing, and has only a third of the deaths of New York City alone.

France and Spain have both decided against a relaxation of measures for now.

France's Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said the country was starting to beat back the coronavirus, as the outbreak's death toll approached 20,000 on Sunday and new hospitalisations continued a slow decline.

But he stressed that a nationwide lockdown which entered into force on March 17 must be strictly respected until May 11, when it will start being lifted in phases.

In the capital Paris, police fought running battles in at least five suburbs overnight with residents who accused officers of using heavy-handed tactics to enforce the country's strict coronavirus lockdown.

And in Spain, the spread of Covid-19 seems to be slowing despite more than 200,000 people having been infected, officials said yesterday. Health emergency chief Fernando Simon noted that the rate of new infections continues to fall despite an increase in testing.

Spain has imposed one of Europe's strictest lockdown regimes, and this has in turn led to a disruption to the economy of "considerable severity", the country's central bank said.

BLOOMBERG, REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE