As Virus Infections Surge, Countries End Lockdowns

Still struggling with rising coronavirus cases, India, Mexico, Russia, Iran and Pakistan have decided they must end lockdowns and restart their economies. From a report: At Nigambodh Ghat, the oldest cremation grounds in India’s capital, the bodies keep coming. One ambulance arrives with five inside. Then another. Then another, in an endless display of death. As the coronavirus pandemic surges in New Delhi, a public health care system that was already strained might be reaching its breaking point. People can’t get tested. They can’t find a hospital bed. The situation has become so grim that government officials have proposed commandeering some of New Delhi’s fanciest hotels to turn into hospitals. But ready or not, much of India’s coronavirus lockdown has ended, as have those in other countries struggling to balance economic damage with coronavirus risk. In many places — India, Mexico, Russia, Iran and Pakistan, among others — leaders have come to feel they have no choice but to take the surge of cases on the chin and prioritize the economy. Some of these leaders, especially those in the developing world, said they couldn’t sustain the punishing lockdowns without risking economic catastrophe, especially for their poorest citizens. So the thinking has shifted, from commanding people to stay indoors and avoid the virus and other people at all costs, to now openly accepting some illness and death to try to limit the damage to livelihoods and to individual lives. A glimpse from the streets, reported by correspondents in countries especially hard hit, reveals a sharp rise in person-to-person contact in recent days — precisely at the time that the World Health Organization is warning that infections from this highly contagious disease are roaring toward a new peak. India is now producing more new daily infections, around 10,000, than all but two countries, the United States and Brazil.