The Airbus A320 was flying from the eastern city of Lahore to Karachi in the south just as Pakistan was resuming domestic flights in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

By May, airlines around the world had grounded about 95% of their capacity as air travel all but came to a standstill due to the coronavirus pandemic.

State leaders, businesses and working class Indians have called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi to reopen the battered economy, but the government is expected to extend the lockdown.

Governments around the world are struggling with the question of how to reopen their economies while still containing the virus, which has infected almost 4.3 million people.

Tens of thousands of people have been walking home from India’s big cities after losing their jobs because of a lockdown to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus since late March.

South Korean battery maker LG Chemical Ltd, the owner of the facility, located around 14 kilometers away from Visakhapatnam city, said the gas leak had been brought under control.

India’s average daily increase in cases has been 6.1 over the past week, behind Russia and Brazil but higher than Britain, the United States and Italy.

The United States has by far the world’s largest number of confirmed coronavirus cases at over 810,000, almost four times as many as Spain, the country with the second-highest number.

The Republican president has been pushing to reopen US businesses and end orders that Americans stay home to fight the spread of the disease.

The Indian government will also allow farm activities, construction of roads and buildings in the hinterland which has so far been less affected by the coronavirus contagion.

The IMF, in its 2020 World Economic Outlook, said its forecasts were marked by “extreme uncertainty” and that outcomes could be far worse, depending on the course of the pandemic.

Trump, at a White House news conference, said the WHO had “failed in its basic duty and it must be held accountable."

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a televised address to the nation, held out hope that some restrictions could be eased next week in the least-affected areas to allow essential activities.

The United States has seen its highest death tolls to date in the epidemic with roughly 2,000 deaths a day reported for the last four days in a row, a plurality of them in and around New York City.

It took 83 days for the first 50,000 deaths to be recorded and just eight more for the toll to climb to 100,000.