Coronavirus: Wuhan to ease lockdown as world battles pandemic

• Coronavirus: Wuhan to ease lockdown as world battles pandemic

Coronavirus: Wuhan to ease lockdown as world battles pandemic

New Delhi : China has said it will relax many restrictions on travel to and from Hubei, the province where the coronavirus outbreak began, on Wednesday, as the United Kingdom announced strict controls on movement to slow the spread of COVID-19.

The UK move came after the country reportred 52 more deaths and followed the imposition of strict lockdowns in France, Spain and Italy, as Europe reels from a pandemic that the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned is accelerating. In Africa, Senegal, South African and the Ivory Coast were among the countries to also announce sweeping movement restrictions.More 16,500 people have died from COVID-19 about the world, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University. Nearly 102,000 of the 382,000 people who have been diagnosed with the disease have recovered.

I'm Kate Mayberry in Kuala Lumpur with Al Jazeera's continuing coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.


Coronavirus: Wuhan to ease lockdown as world battles pandemic


Meanwhile, health experts say Americans must limit their social interactions or the number of infections will overwhelm the health care system there.

Spanish soldiers helping to fight the coronavirus pandemic have found elderly patients in retirement homes abandoned and, in some cases, dead in their beds, the defence ministry has said.

An ice rink in Madrid is to be used as a temporary mortuary for Covid-19 victims, officials said.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that the pandemic is accelerating, with more than 300,000 cases now confirmed. It is urging countries to adopt rigorous testing and contact-tracing strategies.

Coronavirus: Wuhan to ease lockdown as world battles pandemic

LIVE: Latest updates on the coronavirus outbreak

Wuhan has been shut off from the rest of the world since the middle of January. But officials now say anyone who has a "green" code on a widely used smartphone health app will be allowed to leave the city from 8 April.

Earlier, the authorities reported a new case of coronavirus in Wuhan, ending a five-day run of no new cases in the city.

It comes after health officials there confirmed that they were not counting cases of people who were positive but had not been admitted to hospital or did not show any symptoms of the disease.

Official government figures say there have been almost 80 new cases reported on the Chinese mainland in the last 24 hours. All but four of them were caused by infected travellers arriving from abroad.

This so-called "second wave" of imported infections is also affecting countries like South Korea and Singapore, which had been successful in stopping the spread of disease in recent weeks.

Al Jazeera/bbc