South America reopens as virus peak nears

A customer buys alcohol at a liquor shop in Johannesburg on Monday as South Africa moves into level three of a five-tier lockdown. Africas COVID-19 cases on Tuesday surpassed 1,50,000 while the WHO says the continent of 1.3 billion people is still least a

South American countries on Monday began easing COVID-19 restrictions even as the region hurtles toward its viral peak, disregarding the example set by European nations that were battered earlier by the virus.

Some of Brazil-s hardest hit cities are starting to allow more activity. Rio de Janeiro, with the second-most cases after Sao Paulo, on Monday announced it would begin gradually relaxing restrictions the following day.

Bolivia-s government authorised reopening most of the country and the government of Venezuela-s Nicolás Maduro unwound restrictions. Ecuador-s airports were resuming flights and shoppers returning to some of Colombia-s malls.

-Situation far from stable-
The executive director of the World Health Organisation-s emergencies program, Mike Ryan, expressed concern over South America-s climbing contagion, telling reporters on Monday that the region had become an "intense zone of transmission for this virus," which had not yet reached its peak.

"Clearly the situation in many South American countries is far from stable. There is a rapid increase in cases and those systems are coming under increasing pressure," he said.

Data from the WHO-s Pan American Health Organisation shows the region-s seven-day rolling average of new cases continues rising, due in large part to Brazil, which accounts for more than half the total.

Brazil-s caseload continues to surge, yet its airport will resume international flights on June 3, according to Nicolás Romero, the airport-s spokesperson, though he said arriving passengers must spend 15 days in quarantine, without specifying how such quarantine will be enforced.

China sat on virus info, frustrating WHO, says report

Throughout January, the WHO publicly praised China for what it called a speedy response to COVID-19 and thanked the government for sharing the genetic map of the virus "immediately." But in fact, Chinese officials sat on releasing the genetic map, or genome, of the virus for over a week after multiple government labs had fully decoded it, not sharing details key to designing tests, drugs and vaccines.Although WHO continued to publicly commend China, the recordings obtained by the AP show they were concerned China was not sharing key information, costing the world valuable time.

-Pakistan experts wanted lockdown-

A leaked government document reveals authorities ignored experts who wanted a month-long lockdown in Punjab province and who estimated 6,70,000 might have been infected in Lahore. After media published experts- report on Tuesday, residents criticised the government for easing the curbs in April instead of heeding the recommendation. Pakistan has seen 1,621 fatalities amid 76,398 cases.

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