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Here’s Europe’s Plan to Get People Back to Work After Covid-19

Here’s Europe’s Plan to Get People Back to Work After Covid-19

(Bloomberg) -- The European Commission says companies and workers won’t get back to business-as-usual until there’s a vaccine or a cure for Covid-19. In the meantime, the European Union’s executive has drawn up plans for a partial lifting of restrictions in an effort to mitigate the economic devastation.

The roadmap unveiled by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday seeks to coordinate a gradual exit from the lockdowns that the bloc’s 27 member states imposed last month to slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus. The commission has warned that the easing may be temporary as it will “unavoidably” lead to a spike in new cases that could threaten healthcare systems again and lead to a reinstatement of the confinement rules.

The commission has been consulting with national governments and its plan echoes the approach already adopted by countries such as Austria and Denmark.

It sets out the following conditions for easing the emergency measures:

  • Infections have decreased significantly for a sustained period of time
  • Hospitals have enough beds, intensive care units, medicines and equipment
  • There’s large-scale capacity for testing, monitoring the spread of the virus, tracing and quarantining carriers

Once those conditions have been met, governments should gradually ease restrictions along the following principles:

  • Create a system for tracking contact between people using mobile apps that can warn if someone nearby is infected
  • Maintain social distancing measures
  • Drastically expand testing -- widespread testing is a “precondition for lifting social distancing measures in the future” and for contact tracing applications to work
  • Protective measures for older people should remain in place for longer
  • Gradually lift travel and border-crossing restrictions, starting with journeys “between areas with comparably low levels of risk”
  • Incoming travel from non-EU nations will be phased in later, depending on the situation in each country
  • Return to work must also be gradual and not all personnel should be allowed back to offices at the same time. Remote working should still be encouraged and initially only less risky groups and sectors essential to economic activity should to return
  • Gatherings of people should be progressively permitted, with restrictions:
    • Schools and universities can reopen with social distancing measures, such as different lunch times, enhanced cleaning, smaller classrooms and more e-learning
    • Commercial activity can be phased in with restrictions on the numbers allowed in shops
    • Bars, cafes and restaurants can follow with restricted opening hours and limited numbers allowed in
  • Member states should keep each other informed of their plans and take into account the situation in neighboring countries to minimize the risk of cross-border infections
  • Member states are asked to be ready to tighten measures again if the number of cases starts to threaten health-care systems

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