Shrieks of joy rang in the streets of Spain on Sunday as children were allowed to leave their homes for the first time in six weeks.
The sound of children shouting and the rattle of bikes on the pavement after the 44-day seclusion of Spain’s youngest citizens offered a first taste of a gradual return to normal life in the country.
Spain has the second-highest number of confirmed infections, behind the United States.
“This is wonderful! I can’t believe it has been six weeks,” Susana Sabate, a mother of three-year-old twin boys, said in Barcelona.
“My boys are very active. Today when they saw the front door and we gave them their scooters, they were thrilled.”
The number of deaths officially attributed to coronavirus has topped 200,000 globally and at least 2.9 million people have been infected, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.
Those figures are widely believed to understate the true toll of the pandemic, due to limited testing, problems in counting the dead and some governments’ moves to underplay their outbreaks.
Spain, Italy and France, which have Europe’s highest death tolls from the virus, all imposed tough lockdown rules in March.
“Maximum caution will be our guideline for the rollback,” Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez said on Saturday as he announced that Spaniards will be allowed to leave their homes for short walks and exercise starting on May 2.
Children under 14 have been in complete seclusion, but as of Sunday they were allowed to take walks with one parent for up to an hour.
Mr Sanchez will present a detailed plan tomorrow for the “de-escalation” of the lockdown for the coming weeks.
In France, prime minister Edouard Philippe said he will unveil the “national deconfinement strategy” tomorrow.
French President Emmanuel Macron has announced that France’s lockdown would start to be lifted beginning on May 11.
Italy’s prime minister Giuseppe Conte is expected to announce more details easing the lockdown in the coming days for the first European country to see a large-scale coronavirus outbreak.
