Leaders in France and Britain also questioned China's management of the crisis, and French President Macron said it would be 'naive' to think Beijing had handled the pandemic well.
World coronavirus deaths passed 150,000 Friday as US President Donald Trump accused China of continuing to cover up its toll, even after Beijing revised figures sharply upward for Wuhan, the original epicenter of the global pandemic.
But widespread nervousness remained over when and how to ease widespread confinement measures to revive the world economy, battered by what the International Monetary Fund has dubbed the"Great Lockdown".More than 2.2 million cases of COVID-19 have been reported in 193 countries and territories, according to figures collected by AFP from national authorities and information from the World Health Organization .
Trump, who has been accused of reacting too slowly to the coronavirus threat, alleged that Beijing's numbers were still untrue.Trump did not offer evidence, but pressure has mounted in recent days on Beijing to come clean over its handling of the original outbreak, as US media reported suspicions the virus came not from a Wuhan wet market as first claimed, but from a poorly-managed nearby research facility studying bat-related diseases.
The government declared its outbreak"under control" and said select small shops will be allowed to reopen Monday and some children would return to school within weeks.Switzerland, Denmark and Finland were among those gradually re-opening shops and schools, and even in hard-hit Italy, people began emerging from lockdown, with Venice residents strolling around quiet canals stripped of their usual throngs of tourists.
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