There are currently over 6 billion people living on lockdown, over 71,950 confirmed cases of coronavirus infection, 33,633 confirmed deaths and out those infected, around 5% or 26,737 are either in serious or critical condition.

 

While those numbers are already a serious wakeup for local governments, some countries are saying there is no need to panic.

 

Take Belarus as an example. The president, Alexander Lukashenko refuses to cancel anything and says vodka and saunas will cure any COVID-19 symptoms. Very few measures have been enforced to curb coronavirus in Belarus and instead, people are being urged to drink vodka and go to saunas. On top of that, all the sporting events are taking place as usual and this picture tells everything about the mood on the ground.

 

 

The football organizers have said they do not intend to postpone any matches or to cancel the season. President Alexander Lukashenko took part in an ice hockey match last week - declaring that sport "is the best anti-virus remedy".

 

Another country, Sweden, is the only EU country that has not yet introduced strict quarantine measures. Although the Prime Minister of the Scandinavian kingdom, Stephen Leuven, urged citizen to mentally prepare for an increase in the number of cases of COVID-19, the Swedish authorities are in no hurry to limit public life.

 

According to Spiegel Online, the cafes and restaurants of Stockholm are packed to capacity - perhaps now visitors have been obliged to sit at their tables and not crowd around the bar. More recently, mass gatherings of people within 500 people were allowed in the country, which many theaters and concert halls used to sell tickets for 499 spectators.

 

 

The chief epidemiologist in Sweden, Anders Tegnell, who heads the public health agency, responsible for these decisions, continues to insist that "the population should be ill with the virus." At the same time, his British and Dutch colleagues still refused this approach. According to Johns Hopkins University, already 3069 patients with coronavirus have been identified in Sweden, 105 patients have died. Now, 500 intensive care beds have been deployed throughout the country, although experts admit that this is at least three times less than might be needed in a critical situation.

 

Another country, Brazil, called the pandemic a momentary, minor problem and saying strong measures to contain it are unnecessary. The Brazilian Presidentm Jair Bolsonaro told reporters that he feels Brazilians’ natural immunity will protect the nation.

 

“The Brazilian needs to be studied. He doesn’t catch anything. You see a guy jumping into sewage, diving in, right? Nothing happens to him. I think a lot of people were already infected in Brazil, weeks or months ago, and they already have the antibodies that help it not proliferate,” Bolsonaro said. “I’m hopeful that’s really a reality.”

 

The number of COVID-19 cases approach 4,000, deaths top 100. And while he believe that  the virus will be vanquished by a cocktail of drugs and Brazil’s tropical climate, analysts say a more calculated political gamble may underlie his increasingly defiant position.

 

In Singapore, tourism receipts rose to S$27.1 billion (US$19 billion) in 2019 based on preliminary estimates, from S$26.9 billion the year before. Even though tourist arriving in Singapore must be placed in quarantine for 14 days, all the restaurants, pubs, gym, hotel are open. Singapore, as with many other countries that did not took a more drastic approach during the epidemic and people are now living their daily life as other countries once did.

 

 

No one knows which approach will work better, as we haven’t seen anything like this before so only time will tell. Bemorepanda has published a research by the Imperial College London (UK) with three different scenarios of the coronavirus epidemic here.