Lockdown

The government and the country as of 4 May will enter the next phase of the pandemic crisis with a gradual lockdown lifting which will put an end to SMS permission or written certificates that one has a serious reason (from a list of categories from exercising, grocery shopping, and walking the dog to caring for homebound citizens) to leave one's home.

The Hellenic Police (ELAS) on Tuesday recorded a total of 1,567 violations of a public lockdown introduced last month to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
Of those transgressions, the majority (814) were in Attica, with 167 in Thessaloniki, 93 on Crete, 80 on the Ionian islands, 54 in Eastern Macedonia and Thrace and 46 in Thessaly.

The United States reported its millionth coronavirus case as hard-hit European countries took tentative steps towards lifting lockdowns, with masks mandatory in all German shops from April 29.    

Excitement over a move towards normality in many places was tempered by fear of new outbreaks and growing evidence of the economic devastation wreaked by the pandemic.    

Health Minister Nelu Tataru said on Tuesday that Romania is still headed for the peak of the coronavirus pandemic and expects the number of new cases to decrease "from one day to the next" for the next two weeks. "We were expecting at the end of April, after the Easter holiday, a peak, with the peak predicted to be steeper or smoother.

The Transport Ministry has announced protective measures that must be adopted by driving schools in light of the coronavirus outbreak.

Spanish children were allowed outside on April 26 for the first time in six weeks as countries eased lockdown measures in a bid to slowly reopen economies gutted by the coronavirus pandemic that has infected nearly three million people worldwide.    

As people across the world have to live under lockdown to stem the coronavirus pandemic, prolonged isolation could cause many relationships to falter, according to experts on mental health and legal issues.

"A divorce pandemic may be around the corner," Yudum Söylemez, a lecturer of psychology at Istanbul's Bilgi University, told Anadolu Agency.

Greece will extend measures taken to stem the spread of the coronavirus in the country by one week to May 4 from April 27, government spokesman Stelios Petsas announced Thursday.
He said the new plan on how to gradually recall some of the restrictions will be announced by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, early next week, possibly on Monday (April 27).

But the National Operational Headquarters says the areas must remain under lockdown, and testing there should increase, as six out of the 40 deaths related to the virus are connected to the neighbourhoods. The high density of population there also adds to official concerns.

Several countries have announced this week that they will start to gradually lift some of the measures they introduced to curb the COVID-19 pandemic, but slowly and in stages.