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Norway Starts Easing Restrictions With Virus Seen as Under Control

Norway Starts Easing Restrictions With Virus Seen as Under Control

(Bloomberg) -- Norway will start to ease the measures imposed to limit the spread of new coronavirus after locking down early.

Schools, universities and technical colleges will start opening their doors from April 27, Prime Minister Erna Solberg said at a webcast press conference on Tuesday. Services that require personal contact, such as hairdressers and physiotherapists, can be resumed gradually, while restrictions on large sporting and cultural events will remain in place until June 15.

“Norway has managed to gain control of the virus. The job now is to keep that control,” Solberg said. The changes will be implemented over time in a controlled manner, she said.

Norway has 5,863 confirmed cases, with 69 deaths as a consequence of the Covid-19 illness, according to its latest official tally. The rate of new infections has slowed to a little over 100 cases a day, after peaking at 425.

Norway follows Denmark in easing restrictions after taking drastic steps early on, finding themselves on a different trajectory to those that were slow to react. In neighboring Sweden, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven recently admitted he’ll need to review his laissez-faire response to the virus, after new forecasts showed that thousands of his countrymen will lose their lives to Covid-19.

“The fight against the virus has not been won, although we now seem to have reached the goal that on average each person doesn’t infect more than one,” Norway’s Health Minister Bent Hoie said.

Norway’s Conservative-led government has said it will do what’s necessary to support the economy of western Europe’s biggest petroleum-producing nation. The central bank has cut its benchmark rate twice, saying it’s both ready to ease more and buy kroner to support a currency weakened by a slump in oil prices.

Norwegians will no longer be prohibited from traveling away to their cabins from April 20, but the government still advises against leisure travel, Hoie said.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.