Plastic spacing barriers and millions of masks appeared Monday on the streets of Europe’s newly reopened cities, as France and Belgium emerged from lockdowns, the Netherlands sent children back to school and Spain let people eat outdoors.

Europe was marking the 75th anniversary of the surrender of Nazi Germany to Allied forces in low-key fashion Friday because of coronavirus lockdown restrictions across the continent.

As Europe and the U.S. loosen their lockdowns against the coronavirus, health experts are bracing for what they say is an all but certain second wave of deaths and infections that could force governments to clamp back down in a drawn-out, two-steps-forward-one-step-back process.

Britain on Tuesday became the first country in Europe to confirm more than 30,000 coronavirus deaths, and infections rose sharply again in Russia, even as other nations made great strides in containing the scourge. China marked its third week with no new reported deaths, while South Korea restarted its baseball season.

The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits because of the coronavirus has soared past 30 million, worsening a crisis unmatched since the 1930s and turning up the pressure on political leaders to lift restrictions that are choking the economy.

Doctors in Britain, Italy, and Spain have been warned to look out for a rare inflammatory condition in children that is possibly linked to the new coronavirus.

The question of when to reopen schools looms large as European countries and U.S. states draw up plans to restart their battered economies.

The first tentative steps in lifting the economically crippling coronavirus restrictions in Europe and China are running into resistance, with shoppers and other customers staying away from the reopened businesses and workers afraid the newly restored freedoms could put their health at risk.

Governments battling a virus that has crossed borders with breathtaking speed pinned their hopes Tuesday on tests, technology and a coordinated approach to ease the tight restrictions on movement that have slowed the outbreak but strangled the global economy.

In the brutal months since France reported Europe’s first coronavirus cases in January and then, in February, the first death on the continent, the scourge has infected so many thousands of doctors, nurses and other health workers in Europe that some have now recovered and are going from their sick beds back to the front lines.

The global death toll from the coronavirus has surpassed 100,000, with more than half the U.S. deaths clustered in the three-state metro area around New York City

Nine leading European university hospitals are warning they will run out of essential medicines needed for COVID-19 patients in intensive care in less than two weeks as they are increasingly crushed by the pandemic.

President Donald Trump has acknowledged that the federal stockpile is nearly depleted of personal protective equipment used by doctors and nurses to safeguard themselves from the rapidly spreading coronavirus.

A jet carrying 359 people including hundreds of American and Canadian cruise ship passengers home from France landed at Atlanta’s international airport on Friday as emergency responders prepared to screen them for the coronavirus, federal officials said.

When travel bans apparently stalled medical transport of donor stem cells for her husband, Spokane resident Janet Terpko made calls all weekend to federal and foreign officials. On Monday, Terpko said the material is expected to arrive soon in Seattle from a Poland donor. Based on a registry, the woman was a best match for her husband Jared Weeks’s stem cell transplant for leukemia.

Desperate travelers choked European border crossings Wednesday after countries implemented strict controls to try to slow the spread of the coronavirus, which has now infected more than 200,000 people worldwide and killed more than 8,000.

The morning rush-hour scene at Madrid’s Atocha train station this week perfectly captured the dilemma facing Europe as it confronts the coronavirus.

Monday marked another stage in the global battle to outwit the new coronavirus, as reported infections in the rest of the world overtook those in China.