Coronavirus Lockdowns Start to Shift in Europe; Boris Johnson Leaves Hospital: Live Coverage

Lockdowns in some European countries are shifting, but not without heated debate.

Across Europe, leaders moved gingerly to calibrate lockdown measures, leery of setting off surges in new infections as they seek to mitigate the economic disaster created by the virus.

In Denmark, schools and day care centers will reopen on Wednesday, with new instructions to prevent children from playing in large groups. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said the easing of restrictions was like “walking a tightrope,” even as hospitals in Denmark remained below full capacity, and deaths appeared to decline.

In Russia, officials on Sunday reported 2,186 new confirmed cases, the largest daily increase since the start of the outbreak, bringing the national tally to 15,770, with 130 deaths. Mayor Sergei Sobyanin of Moscow said that the city would introduce digital permits that will be required to travel by car, motorcycle, taxi and public transit.

In Germany, where gatherings of more than two people are banned, the police in Frankfurt were attacked with stones and metal pipes when they tried to break up a party of about 20 people late Friday. Around the country, hundreds of officers fanned out across parks and riverbanks to ensure that the rules were observed. Chancellor Angela Merkel will meet on Wednesday with state governors to discuss whether restrictions can be eased.

Spain, the only European country hit harder than Italy by the pandemic, was preparing to allow factories and construction sites to recall workers after the Easter holiday, even as the population remains under lockdown until at least April 26. Elected officials from the regional governments of Madrid and Catalonia, the two areas most affected by the virus, questioned the lifting of restrictions.

On Saturday, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the conservative leader of the Madrid region, said she would respect the orders of the government, but warned that it would be “unforgivable” if the authorities allowed another wave of infections.

Britain surpasses 10,000 deaths, and Boris Johnson is released from the hospital.

In Britain, where the total number of reported coronavirus deaths surpassed 10,000 this weekend, Prime Minister Boris Johnson was released from the hospital on Sunday.

It was a major step forward in his recovery from the coronavirus and a welcome relief for a nation whose political leadership has been harder hit by the contagion than that of any other Western country.

In a video posted on Twitter, he credited the National Health Service with saving his life, calling it “the beating heart of this country.”

“It’s hard to find words to express my debt,” he said, looking a bit wan but speaking with his usual vigor.

He thanked Britons for adhering to social distancing measures and said that were helping to slow the spread of the virus.

He named two nurses — Jenny, from New Zealand and Luis, from Portugal — who “stood by my bedside for 48 hours when things could have gone either way.”

Mr. Johnson, who spent three nights in intensive care at St. Thomas’ Hospital in London, will convalesce at Chequers, the prime minister’s country house, the government said in a statement. But he will soon be able to sign off on major decisions, including when to ease the country’s lockdown.

His release came a day after Queen Elizabeth II released a recorded Easter message in which she said that the holiday was a time of “light overcoming darkness.”

“We know that coronavirus will not overcome us,” the queen said. “As dark as death can be, particularly for those suffering with grief, light and life are greater. May the living flame of the Easter hope be a steady guide as we face the future.”

The total number of confirmed cases in the country is nearly 79,000, and the virus has also emerged in the country’s prisons. The fiancée of Julian Assange — the WikiLeaks founder, who is being held in Belmarsh prison, a high-security facility in London — appealed for him and others to be released on bail because an inmate at the facility has died from the coronavirus. Mr. Assange and his partner, Stella Moris-Smith Robertson, a legal researcher on his legal team, have two young children together.

Crime has generally fallen in the country since lockdown measures were introduced — a 21 percent drop in the last four weeks compared with the same period last year, officials said on Saturday.

But the home secretary, Priti Patel, said in a daily briefing that fraudsters had been using the pandemic “as a hook for new acquisitive crimes” with losses to victims surpassing 1.8 million pounds, about $2.2 million.

She also said that online sex abusers had been exploiting the fact that an increasing number of young people are online at home, and that calls to a national hotline for victims of domestic abuse had increased 120 percent in one 24-hour period.

Saudi Arabia, Russia and others agree to slash oil production to balance falling demand caused by lockdowns.

Saudi Arabia, Russia and other oil-producing nations completed an agreement to slash production, aiming to bolster prices that collapsed when global demand cratered amid the pandemic.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and Russia had reached a tentative agreement on Thursday. The final agreement will cut 9.7 million barrels a day.

The plan was delayed after the lone holdout, Mexico, stood firm on its position to cut 100,000 barrels a day and not the 400,000 barrels that Saudi Arabia had pushed for. The United States, Brazil and Canada promised to make up the 300,000-barrel-a-day difference.

The collapse in economic activity caused by the virus reduced demand by an estimated 30 million to 35 million barrels a day, according to international energy agencies and oil consultants. Analysts expect oil prices, which soared above $100 a barrel only six years ago, to remain below $40 for the foreseeable future.

Russia and Saudi Arabia — which only a month ago hoped to undercut American producers — have retreated from threats to pump more oil into the already-saturated market. President Trump had lobbied both countries to lower production.

Pakistan’s leader calls for debt relief for poor countries, where hunger looms amid lockdowns.

Prime Minister Imran Khan of Pakistan appealed to the international community to provide debt relief to impoverished countries struggling to beat coronavirus on Sunday, highlighting that while the developed world has launched giant stimulus packages to weather the storm, developing nations are barely able to feed their citizens.

“There is a huge discrepancy of the resources available to us in the developing world and the resources available to the developed world,” Mr. Khan said in a video message. “We do not have the money to spend on the already overstretched health services and to stop people from dying from hunger.”

Many countries owe significant sums to international lenders and have been unable to scrape together robust stimulus packages to help their citizens manage the current lockdown, which has shuttered business and tanked economies. The prospect for social unrest is high as the newly imposed measures render millions jobless and homeless overnight.

While the United States announced a $2.2 trillion relief package for its 328 million people, Pakistan scrounged together some $8 billion for its population of about 200 million. India launched measures worth $22.5 billion for its people, who number 1.3 billion.

Pakistan has reported more than 5,183 confirmed cases of the virus, with 288 deaths, according to a New York Times database, but many fear that the real numbers are much higher because of a lack of testing.

Mr. Khan was loath to announce a lockdown weeks ago, warning it would ruin Pakistan’s economy. Eventually the country’s powerful military sidelined the prime minister and worked with provincial governments to enforce a lockdown.

In a live-streamed Easter Mass, Pope Francis says the pandemic is ‘testing our whole human family.’

Pope Francis celebrated Easter Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica on Sunday morning, empty of faithful and assisted by a handful of attendants. The Mass, sung mostly in Latin, was live-streamed for the tens of thousands who could not attend in person.

Last year, an estimated 70,000 faithful crammed into St. Peter’s Square on Easter morning to hear the pope deliver his “Urbi et Orbi” (“To the City and to the World”) message after Easter Mass. But this year people are prohibited to gather in the square because of the coronavirus outbreak.

Francis acknowledged that for many, “this is an Easter of solitude lived amid the sorrow and hardship that the pandemic is causing, from physical suffering to economic difficulties,” and said his thoughts were with those directly affected by the virus: doctors and nurses, the sick, those who had died and family members in mourning. As he spoke, more than 1.7 million cases had been recorded worldwide, with at least 109,000 deaths.

Addressing “a world already faced with epochal challenges and now oppressed by a pandemic severely testing our whole human family,” Francis spoke of “the contagion of hope.” God is with us, he said, “firmly reassuring us: Do not be afraid, I have risen and I am with you still.”

Acknowledging the concerns of many people who face an uncertain economic future and fears surrounding unemployment, he called on political leaders “to work actively for the common good, to provide the means and resources needed to enable everyone to lead a dignified life and, when circumstances allow, to assist them in resuming their normal daily activities.”

“This is not a time for indifference,” Francis said, “because the whole world is suffering and needs to be united in facing the pandemic.”

Amid an exploding caseload in the U.S., Easter services take on many forms.

On Sunday morning, millions of Americans tuned in to online Easter services to celebrate the holiest day of the Christian calendar as the coronavirus continued to explode across the country in the world’s largest and most lethal outbreak.

But a small handful of pastors in states like Louisiana and Mississippi defied stay-at-home guidance and hosted in-person worship services, risking contagion among their congregations and their own arrests.

Other churches attempted to maintain some semblance of communal ritual while keeping worshipers separated. In Kentucky, Victory Hill Church held a service at a drive-in movie theater so people could pray in their cars. At St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, parishioners watched online as Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan bent over the communion cup and wine, his voice echoing across empty pews to the locked front door.

On the National Mall in Washington, a few people gathered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to sing hymns and watch the sun rise.

Restrictions on gatherings have frustrated a small number of religious conservatives, who see the rules as attempts to limit Christian practice. In Kentucky on Saturday, a federal judge blocked Mayor Greg Fischer of Louisville from restricting drive-in church services, noting that drive-in liquor stores were still open. The governors of Florida and Texas have exempted religious services from stay-at-home orders.

President Trump spent Easter morning watching a live-streamed service at of First Dallas Church given by Robert Jeffress, a conservative evangelical pastor who has drawn criticism for calling the behavior of gay people “filthy” and “degrading,” calling the Catholic Church an instrument of Satan and asserting that Islam “promotes pedophilia.” During the service, Mr. Jeffress thanked President Mr. Trump for defending religious liberty.

Here’s what else is happening in the United States:

• The country has surpassed Italy in the total number of confirmed deaths from the coronavirus — more than 20,000 — and it has by far the largest number of known cases: more than 530,000.

• With roads cleared of traffic because of the coronavirus pandemic, cities including Boston, Minneapolis and Oakland, Calif., have repurposed streets into car-free zones, giving pedestrians and cyclists extra room to spread out and practice social distancing.

• A Times investigation found that throughout January, as President Trump repeatedly played down the seriousness of the virus and focused on other issues, an array of figures inside his government — from top White House advisers to experts deep in the cabinet departments and intelligence agencies — identified the threat, sounded alarms and made clear the need for aggressive action. Read the full investigation.

• Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, which has become the global epicenter of the pandemic, said at a news briefing on Sunday that daily death tolls in the state remained in the 700s, but the rate of hospitalizations is continuing to fall. Read the latest updates from the New York region.

• Walt Disney World in Florida plans to furlough about 43,000 workers, the company and a union coalition representing the workers said. In mid-March, Disney theme parks worldwide closed, including Disney World in Florida and Disneyland Resort in California.

• Officials in New Jersey, second only to New York in the number of cases and deaths, pleaded last week for medical professionals from other states to come to their aid. By Friday, 75 ambulances with license plates from places as far as Minnesota and Georgia and nearly 200 paramedics and emergency medical technicians had arrived to help the state.

Latest in science news: Researchers are studying the role of ‘superspreaders’ who infect many others.

As the virus upends countries around the world, scientists are studying the role of superspreaders, a loosely defined term for people who may infect a disproportionate number of others, whether as a consequence of genetics, social habits or simply by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Understanding how they work could help in containing outbreaks.

The virus carriers at the heart of what are being called superspreading events can and have driven epidemics, researchers say, making it crucial to figure out ways to identify spreading events or to prevent situations, like crowded rooms, where superspreading can occur.

At the end of February, for example, when 175 Biogen executives gathered for a conference at a Boston hotel, at least one was infected with the coronavirus. Two weeks later, dozens of people associated with the company were infected.

Just as important are those at the other end of the spectrum — people who are infected but unlikely to spread the infection.

Distinguishing between those who are more and less infectious could make an enormous difference in the ease and speed with which an outbreak is contained, said Jonathan Zelner, a statistician at the University of Michigan.

If the infected person is a superspreader, contact tracing is especially important. But if the infected person is the opposite of a superspreader, contact tracing may be a wasted effort.

Israeli leaders are under fire for flouting their own lockdown rules during Passover.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and the country’s president, Reuven Rivlin, became targets of a furious backlash over the weekend after it emerged that they had hosted family members from outside their official residences for Passover, circumventing nationwide restrictions that compelled many elderly and single Israelis to spend the holiday alone.

Raanan Shaked, a columnist whose mother had to observe Passover solo, bitterly twisted the concept of the country’s social hierarchy on the front page of Sunday’s Yediot Ahronot newspaper.

“We’ve been disciplined. Obedient. We’ve believed what we’ve been told,” he wrote. “My mother is now part of Second Israel. Just like all of us. Except, of course, for First Israel. Namely, the people who have assumed the role of issuing guidelines, orders and ordinances that oblige all of Second Israel, but which they never dream of applying to themselves.”

The uproar came as Israel sealed off large swaths of its capital city on Sunday, with the restrictions primarily affecting densely populated ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods of Jerusalem where the contagion has been spreading most rapidly.

Compounding the fury over the leaders’ Passover activities, news media reported that their visitors first underwent precautionary coronavirus tests, which are in short supply.

Mr. Netanyahu, 70, appeared in a prerecorded video clip with his younger son, Avner, 25, discussing the Passover story for a televised Seder that aired on Wednesday night. Mr. Netanyahu was quarantined until Wednesday after his health minister, Yaakov Litzman, contracted the coronavirus.

Officials refused to say exactly when the clip was filmed.

Israelis were ordered not to invite anyone outside their households, even immediate family, to their Seder tables, and they spent the night under curfew. Representatives of the Netanyahu family said Avner and his girlfriend were staying in an apartment “adjacent” to the residence, within the security cordon.

Mr. Rivlin, 80, who was widowed last year, apologized after hosting his daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren.

Zion Nanous, a prominent television journalist, wrote on Twitter: “An eclipse that caused the state leaders to think that the rules don’t apply to them — that’s more problematic in my opinion than the coronavirus.”

China sees a rise in new imported cases amid growing anger over racism against Africans.

China’s health ministry on Sunday reported a jump in new coronavirus infections, most of which were detected in people returning from other countries.

The country recorded 162 new cases on Saturday, including 63 cases of people who have no symptoms. More than 100 of the new cases were imported. Two cases of local transmissions were reported in Heilongjiang, a province in the northeast that borders Russia.

China has barred nearly all foreigners from entering the country over concerns that imported coronavirus cases would set off a new wave of infections. It has drastically reduced the number of international flights, making it increasingly difficult for even Chinese nationals to return home.

As China works to stop new cases from being imported into the country, it is seeing growing displays of xenophobia. The most extreme cases have been reported in the southern city of Guangzhou.

African traders and students say they have faced racial widespread discrimination, including being evicted from apartments and forced to sleep on the streets, after five Nigerians who frequented a Guangzhou restaurant tested positive for the coronavirus.

African governments stepped up their protests against the abuse of African nationals in Guangzhou.

Shirley Ayorkor Botchway, the foreign minister of Ghana, summoned the Chinese ambassador and demanded that Beijing address what she called the “inhuman treatment being meted out to Ghanaians and other African nationals.” On Saturday, Moussa Faki Mahamat, the chairman of the African Union Commission, met with the Chinese ambassador to the African Union to express his concern about the treatment of Africans in Guangzhou.

The State Department also warned travelers that Guangzhou authorities were targeting Africans for mandatory testing and quarantine, regardless of travel history. It advised African Americans and anyone who believed they might draw scrutiny for contact with African nationals to avoid Guangzhou.

As demand for Dutch tulips plummets, 140 million stems are destroyed.

The period from March through May — including the weeks in which International Women’s Day, Easter and Mother’s Day fall — is usually the Dutch flower industry’s strongest season. It pulls in 7 billion euros ($7.6 billion), with an average of $30 million in flowers sold daily.

But demand for tulips dropped precipitously as lockdowns were put in place around the globe. As a result, about 400 million flowers, including 140 million tulip stems, were destroyed over the past month, estimates Fred van Tol, the manager of international sales for Royal FloraHolland, a major group of flower and plant producers.

“We had very good quality tulips this year,” said Frank Uittenbogaard, a director of JUB Holland, a 110-year-old family farm, who made the tough decision to destroy his 200,000 tulip stems. “I took my bike and went cycling when they did it, because I couldn’t handle it.”

In the Netherlands — which has recorded more than 25,000 coronavirus cases and over 2,700 deaths — schools, restaurants, bars, museums, sports facilities and gyms are closed until April 28. Most events of more than 30 people have been banned until June 1.

Small shops such as florists and garden shops are allowed to remain open as long as they follow social distancing guidelines. But while growers and distributors that primarily serve the local market are still able to sell flowers and plants domestically, flower businesses that rely on international trade are being hit hard.

North Korea says it will adopt stronger measures.

North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, has warned that the coronavirus pandemic is undermining his efforts to rebuild the North’s decrepit economy, the North’s state media reported on Sunday.

North Korea has taken some of the most drastic actions against the virus, including sealing its borders with China in late January even though its giant neighbor accounts for nine-tenths of its external trade.

It was thanks to such steps that the North was able to maintain a “very stable” anti-epidemic situation, the Political Bureau of Mr. Kim’s ruling Workers’ Party reported.

Outside analysts fear that North Korea remains​ deeply vulnerable to the epidemic ​because of its underequipped public health system, ​ and that the country might ​be hiding an outbreak. ​

In a meeting with Mr. Kim on Saturday, the Political Bureau did not repeat the country’s claim that it had no confirmed coronavirus cases. But it warned that the ​pandemic ravaging the world could create “some obstacles to our struggle and progress” in Mr. Kim’s large construction projects and other efforts to rebuild the economy, the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said​ on Sunday​.

The meeting ended with officials adopting a resolution​ to step up anti-epidemic efforts, the news agency said.

The resolution also said the country would improve its national defense capability. The North Korean military resumed live-fire training of its artillery, rockets and short-range missile units last month.

​Despite the calls for stricter disease-control measures, photos in North Korean media showed that most of the senior officials around Mr. Kim in the Political Bureau meeting did not wear masks. That meant that those officials had tested negative for the coronavirus before being allowed to be near Mr. Kim, outside analysts said.

The World Health Organization has confirmed that some testing is taking place in the North.

In India, the coronavirus fans anti-Muslim attacks.

Young Muslim men who were passing out food to the poor were assaulted with cricket bats. Other Muslims have been beaten up, nearly lynched, run out of their neighborhoods or attacked in mosques, branded as virus spreaders. In Punjab State, loudspeakers at Sikh temples broadcast messages telling people not to buy milk from Muslim dairy farmers because it was said to be infected with the coronavirus.

A spree of anti-Muslim attacks has broken out across India after the country’s health ministry repeatedly blamed an Islamic seminary for spreading the coronavirus and officials spoke of “human bombs” and “corona jihad.”

Hateful messages have bloomed online. And a wave of apparently fake videos has popped up telling Muslims not to wear masks, not to practice social distancing and not to worry about the virus at all, as if the makers of the videos wanted Muslims to get sick.

In a pandemic, there is always the hunt for blame. President Trump has done it, on numerous occasions calling the coronavirus a “Chinese virus.’’ All over the world people are pointing fingers, driven by their fears and anxieties to go after The Other.

In India, no other group has been demonized more than the country’s 200 million Muslims, minorities in a Hindu-dominated land of 1.3 billion people.

To curb the spread of the coronavirus, India imposed a nationwide 21-day lockdown, and officials indicated this weekend that it will be extended.

A statement from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s office said the chief ministers of India’s states had reached a consensus to extend the lockdown for two weeks when it ends on April 15. The statement did not make clear Mr. Modi’s final decision, but some states have already extended the restrictions to the end of the month.

Montreal police open a criminal investigation into deaths at a nursing home.

The police in Montreal said on Saturday night that they had opened a criminal investigation into a private residence for older people after 31 people had died there since March 13, at least five of them from confirmed cases of Covid-19.

Quebec’s premier, François Legault, said that the government had learned of the deaths at the 150-bed Résidence Herron, in a suburb west of Montreal, on Friday, and that he believed they amounted to “gross negligence.”

“This is terrible what happened,” Mr. Legault said, adding that when officials from the regional health authority had arrived at the residence on March 29 to investigate, “almost all the staff was gone.”

At that point, he said, the authority dispatched a team of health workers to care for the residents, and it has now taken over the running of the residence.

An investigation by Montreal Gazette, a local newspaper, said that residents had been discovered unfed and wearing clothing covered with feces.

Mr. Legault said that it was “unacceptable” how older people were being cared for in Quebec, and that staff shortages and insufficient salaries had been an ongoing issue at privately run residences. “I am not proud to see what is happening,” he said.

Résidence Herron is owned by a Quebec real estate company called Katasa, which owns six other retirement residences. The company was not immediately available for comment on Saturday. But it previously said it had been doing its best under challenging circumstances.

Quebec has been hit hard by the coronavirus. As of Saturday, it had 12,292 confirmed cases and 289 deaths. More than 90 percent of those who have died were 70 or older.

Quebec’s minister of health, Danielle McCann, has ordered checks of private residences for older people across the province.

Australians take out the trash in style.

In Australia, where coronavirus infections have risen past 6,200 and large states are on lockdown and enduring an unprecedented economic crisis, residents have found joy in simply taking out the trash.

Bin Isolation Outing, a public Facebook group, which started last month and has grown to over 600,000 members, encourages Australians to get creative with their garbage disposal.

“So basically the bin goes out more than us so let’s dress up for the occasion,” a description of the group said. “Fancy dress, makeup, tutu … be creative!”

Thousands of photos have been uploaded. There’s no shortage of Easter Bunnies, dinosaurs and other recognizable faces like Snow White and Peppa Pig, all taking out the trash. Even some pets have been added to the mix.

One of the more creative posts showed a man having a spa day in his trash can and another showed one family holding a mock wedding where the bride married a trash can, followed by a reception.

The trend has reached Twitter and Instagram, where people are tagging their photos #BinIsolationOuting.

Reporting was contributed by Mihir Zaveri, Karen Zraick, Isabel Kershner, Maria Abi-Habib, Elisabetta Povoledo, Gina Kolata, Peter Baker, Mark Landler, Austin Ramzy, Tiffany May, Melissa Eddy, Jeffrey Gettleman, Kai Schultz, Suhasini Raj, David M. Halbfinger, Declan Walsh, Nina Siegal, Andrew Higgins, Ivan Nechepurenko, Raphael Minder, Martin Selsoe Sorensen, Gillian Wong, Yonette Joseph, Tess Felder, Iliana Magra, Ben Dooley, Choe Sang-Hun, Dan Bilefsky, Derrick Taylor, Courtney Mabeus and Elizabeth Dias.