Europe Looks For Return Of Tourism; European Union Releases Guidelines For Phased Return Tourism; Brazil Reports 11,350 Plus New Cases In A Single Day
CHURCH: Weeks of home confinement are gradually coming to an end across much of the United States, even as new cases and deaths keep climbing. The push to reopen is gaining momentum. CNN's Nick Watt has this report.</s>NICK WATT, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The biggest spike in grocery prices since 1974 says the Bureau of Labor. One in four Americans will lose their jobs says Goldman Sachs. But as states reopen, trying to staunch that economic chaos, one models projected death tolls for the U.S. more than doubled in just two weeks.</s>DR. CHRISTOPHER MURRAY, DIRECTOR, INSTITUTE FOR HEALTH METRICS AND EVALUATION, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON: People have heard the message and have gotten out, they become more mobile, they are having more contact, and we are seeing the effects already.</s>WATT: In most states, new case counts are steady or falling for now but rising in Arkansas, South Dakota, and Delaware.</s>JEN KATES, KAISER FAMILY FOUNDATION: We are seeing fatigue of staying inside and also some mixed messages. One state is doing one thing, another state is doing something else. The federal government has provided just very general guidelines. So, I think there is also some confusion as to what is safe.</s>WATT: Today, New Jersey announced gatherings of people in cars are now allowed.</s>GOV. PHIL MURPHY (D-NJ): If vehicles are closer than six feet apart, then all windows, sunroofs, or convertible tops must remain closed.</s>WATT: West Virginia just announced they will open tanning salons in about a week.</s>GOV. JIM JUSTICE (R-WV): I never dreamed in all my life that we have gotten all these calls in regard to the, the tanning businesses or tanning beds. Our medical experts now feel like we are good to go.</s>WATT: While Washington D.C. re-upped its stay-at-home order.</s>MAYOR MURIEL BOWSER (D-WASHINGTON D.C.): Through Monday, June 8th, and, I should note, that based on the data, I can't revises this order at any time.</s>WATT: A new CNN poll shows that 13 percent rise and those who say they visited friends or family in the past week.</s>DR. ESTHER CHOO, EMERGENCY ROOM PHYSICIAN: We took comfort in the fact that our kids were largely safe. And I wonder if some of that is our comfort with relaxing social distancing measures.</s>WATT: But now, 15 states are reporting rare cases of severe potentially covid related reactions in children.</s>DR. JUAN DUMOIS, PEDIATRIC INFECTIOUS DISEASES: Really high fevers, rashes, and sometimes drops in blood pressure causing shock.</s>WATT: The CDC planning today to warn physicians to look out for such symptoms.</s>GOV. ANDREW CUOMO (D-NY): We have lost three children in New York because of this, 5 year old boy, 7-year-old boy and an 18 year old girl.</s>WATT: And, what does he think about schools opening in the fall?</s>CUOMO: Where are we going to be in September? I don't know. I don't know we are going to be in August. You know, I am trying to figure out June.</s>WATT: Here in L.A. County, the beaches are open again, retailers are open again, but just curbside. The mantra across California, as we are making progress, but we are going to take it slow. Nick Watt, CNN, Manhattan Beach.</s>CHURCH: And the European commission acknowledges this summer will be far from normal, but it is hoping a phased approach to the lifting of restrictions could preserve some tourism in the coming months. Guidelines have been released, the proposed a flexible uncoordinated way forward, the aim to safely and gradually allow tourism to resume, and restore passenger transport by air, rail, and road. The European commission recommends that once the health situation improves, the E.U. should move toward unrestricted free movement within the Schengen zone. Now, despite that action, the E.U. transport commissioner told CNN that tourists who do travel in Europe this summer will do so at their own risk.</s>ADINA-LOANA VALEAN, EUROPEAN COMMISIONER FOR TRANSPORT: It's a risk you take, so no one can actually give you a 100 percent guarantee, and we are not labeling, necessarily that this is 100 percent safe.</s>CHURCH: And joining me now from London is CNN's Nic Robertson, good to see you, Nic. So, as people travel at their own risk, they will find different countries have different restrictions causing complications in some parts of Europe. What did you find?</s>NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Absolutely, and traveling around Europe as I have done over the past couple of weeks or so, it is different from country to country. And at borders, you do get asked that question, where you going? Why are going there? And you can't go places as a tourist at the moment. And that's because countries have reacted to the pandemic, dependent on the severity of the pandemic in their countries in different ways. And in some parts of Europe, that's creating hardships and difficulties. And one of those places is the border area between the Netherlands and Belgium, and when we went there, the situation was something they've never experienced before.</s>ROBERTSON: Once seamless borders, now controlled. Europe's unity facing new strains. And nowhere starker than the border enclave town of Baarle. This is Belgium overhear and the Netherlands over here. B and L, and the border crisscrosses this town right through the middle of the road. Creating a dizzying array of division. The coronavirus lockdown is driving to previously unseen proportions. Belgium's lockdown tougher than the Dutch. And here, the border runs right into the store. I'm going in. Artist Sylvia Reijbroek, loves her special border status, but not the uneven lockdowns. Her shop despite the obvious division is technically Belgian.</s>SYLVIA REIJBROEK, SHOP OWNER: Now it's a big problem because the law said you can open only for the Belgian people.</s>ROBERTSON: So you can only sell to the Belgian people?</s>REIJBROEK: Yes.</s>ROBERTSON: Because you're in Belgium?</s>REIJBROEK: It is a really strange rule to ask people where you are from. So, I have to boycott my customers? Who is paying my bills?</s>ROBERTSON: In the weekly market, on the Dutch side, the cheese seller is hurting too. Normally, you have a lot of people from Belgium coming here to this market to buy your cheese?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, at least 20 to 30 percent. And now we don't see a Belgian.</s>ROBERTSON: Why not?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The borderline is closed so --</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The most peculiar municipality in Belgium and Netherlands.</s>ROBERTSON: Caught in the middle the towns twin mayors.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People are shock now. Personal, but also the countries, Europe, I think they are shocked together.</s>ROBERTSON: Both in lockstep about who is suffering most.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Belgium, it was stronger. The shops were closed. The playgrounds of the children, they were close. We closed the border over there.</s>ROBERTSON: And both in agreement that it's not right.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We've tried to make them listen to us.</s>ROBERTSON: She explains they pleaded with their own national governments and the European Union to fix the imbalance now and make sure that it can't happen again. For some here, the fix can't come soon enough.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 90 percent of the house is Dutch, 10 percent only the -- or you say the toilet.</s>ROBERTSON: It's Belgium.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. Belgium. So on coronavirus lockdown are you doing Dutch or are you doing Belgium? Official Belgium.</s>ROBERTSON: Because his front door is in Belgium.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now, the difference for the countries about the corona, Belgium, Dutch, Germany, England -- all different.</s>ROBERTSON: So is there a union anymore?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I believe nothing about the union.</s>ROBERTSON: Experience has taught the townspeople a lot. When Europe as well, (inaudible) their lives. Now in its worst crisis since World War II, the evidence in Baarle shows how quickly a fundamental of the European project openness can be undone.</s>ROBERTSON: So, one of the ways to sort of continue to sort of keep that openness and that the E.U. is suggesting is that you can have bubbles, if you'd, The Baltic States, maybe such a case where they have similar levels of the pandemic in each country and they can come to mutually agreed between themselves, a travel between them. So, you know, you sort of get pockets of the E.U. opening up if they have the same sort of pandemic experience but that is not the same as opening up the whole of the European Union. So, I think what travelers are going to experience is something that they have never really had before. It's good to be levels of skepticism about them arriving. Are they OK to enter that country? They are not going to bring the virus in with them. And for tourists, that can be quite disconcerting. From our experience there in the Netherlands was that a lot of Dutch people right now are looking just to vacation with their own country. Within their own country. And I think that is going to be a broader European picture as well particularly when you hear that advice. You know, you cannot get a 100 percent safety guarantee.</s>CHURCH: Yes. It's causing a lot of divisions and complications isn't it? Nic Robertson, bringing us that report from your advantage point now back in London. I appreciate it. Well, Brazil's ministry of health is reporting a record high of more than 11,000 new cases of the coronavirus in a single day. The nation now has the six most cases in the world according to Johns Hopkins University, CNN's Matt Rivers has the latest.</s>MATT RIVERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brazil continues to set records that no country would want to set, it was on Tuesday that Brazil reported its highest day today death toll increase so far, reporting 881 deaths as a result of this outbreak, and it was on Wednesday that the country reported nearly 11,400 new cases of this virus. Those new cases mean that Brazil now has the six most confirmed cases out of any country in the world and over the coming days it is likely that Brazil will keep climbing up that list that no country wants to be on. Meanwhile, the president of that country, Jair Bolsonaro continues to express his grave concern over the economic future of Brazil. He has consistently said that it can be facing a horrific recession in the months and years to come and so he has been laser focused on trying to ease quarantine measures and open the economy back up, when his latest moves is to issue a presidential decree that would call for the reopening of certain businesses like gyms and beauty salons with some governors in different states around Brazil have already said, that they will ignore that presidential order. Meanwhile, the country's former health minister who was fired in mid- April after disagreeing with President Bolsonaro and how he wanted to lift a lot of the quarantine measures that have been put in place around the country, that health minister spoke to CNN's Christiane Amanpour and here's a little bit of what he had to say about that disagreement.</s>LUIZ HENRIQUE MANDETTA, FORMER BRAZILIAN HEALTH MINISTER: We were clearly on opposite sides. So, once these differences were public, I think that -- I mean, he did what he decided that he should do but history will tell who was right and who was wrong.</s>RIVERS: Now clearly the health minister was right when he was saying back in March and April that if quarantine measures were lifted, that the number of deaths and cases would rise and that is what we are seeing right now, but that has not dissuaded the Brazilian president from saying the economic threat from this outbreak is equal to, if not worse than what we are seeing this outbreak due to people's health. Matt Rivers, CNN, Mexico City.</s>CHURCH: And still to come on CNN, a Texas businessman says he offered to produce millions of masks to protect Americans, but kept waiting for the U.S. government to return his call. What happened? We will explain on the other side of the break. Stay with us.