Europe summer breaks a stretch for some

The European Union on Wednesday pushed to reopen internal borders and restart travel, although the prospects of reviving tourism ahead of the summer season are mixed given people's fears amid the coronavirus pandemic.

With the tourism sector－which usually accounts for about a 10th of the bloc's economy－decimated by the pandemic, the EU's executive commission urged a return to "unrestricted free movement", albeit with safety measures such as face masks on airplanes.

It also recommended that Europe's borders remain closed for most travel until mid-June at the least.

Across Europe, the virus had infected 1,602,977 people and claimed 155,496 lives as of Wednesday, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

European governments are working on plans to reopen their borders at different speeds, with some countries looking initially to reinstate free travel with only a limited number of neighbors.

"We will not accept bilateral accords within the European Union that might create privileged tourist channels," Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said. "That would leave us outside the European Union and we will never allow this."

Italy had reported 222,104 cases and 31,106 deaths by Wednesday, health authorities said. Conte said he did not yet know when travel between Italy's various regions would once again be allowed.

Financial measures

Also on Wednesday, Conte's Cabinet passed a decree containing financial measures worth 55 billion euros ($59.6 billion) to support an economy hard hit by the virus.

In the United Kingdom, the coronavirus has caused its economy to shrink by 2 percent in the first three months of this year. The coronavirus-related death toll in Britain stood at 33,186, the Department of Health and Social Care said on Wednesday.

Office for National Statistics data released on Wednesday showed the government-ordered shutdown of much of the country on March 23 brought economic contraction at its fastest rate since the height of the financial crisis in 2008.

The monthly drop in GDP was felt in almost all sectors and was the largest since comparable records began in 1997. In March alone, the UK economy shrank by a record 5.8 percent as the crisis escalated.

In Russia, the anti-coronavirus crisis center reported 9,974 new cases in the latest 24-hour period, taking the total to 252,245 on Thursday. The death toll climbed by 93 to 2,305.

Russia's second-largest city St. Petersburg has a shortage of equipment in the city's healthcare facilities, including ventilators, city governor Alexander Beglov said.

In brighter news, the first centenarian patient in Russia, Pelageya Poyarkova, had fully recovered from the virus by Wednesday, her 100th birthday.

Jonathan Powell in London, Ren Qi in Moscow, Xinhua and agencies contributed to this story.