Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lead celebrations at United Nations Headquarters in New York, US. More than 180 countries are expected to join to show their commitment towards yoga.

In a video message, Prime Minister exuded pride that Yoga has become a global spirit and said that Yoga’s spread across the world is a message of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam.

Spain offered a shred of hope as it allowed some factory and construction workers to go back to work, with the number of people dying there from COVID-19 beginning to slow after weeks of tough restrictions.

Italy and Britain also saw their death tolls fall, saying that the efforts of millions of their citizens to stay at home and ease the pressure on struggling health services could be finally flattening the curve of fatalities and infections.

New York is America’s coronavirus epicentre, with its death toll of 10,000 accounting for nearly half of the 22,000 across the entire United States — itself the world’s worst-hit country with a fifth of all deaths worldwide.

The impact in the state has been brutal, with unclaimed victims buried in unmarked mass graves and makeshift morgues set up for the dead.

But New York Governor Andrew Cuomo declared the “worst is over” in the state, even as he announced the grim new figure, adding that he was working on a plan to gradually reopen the economy.

“I believe we can now start on the path to normalcy,” Cuomo said.

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly said he wants to end the restrictions in place across much of the country as soon as possible in order to revive the hammered US economy.

He announced Monday top oil producers could cut production by 20 million barrels per day after nations reached a landmark deal to prop up prices hammered by the coronavirus crisis.

Cautious optimism that the lockdown measures are working is beginning to grow in some countries hardest-hit by the pandemic.

As it began to reopen its economy on Monday, Spain said its death toll had fallen again with 517 fatalities, plus the lowest daily figure of new confirmed infections since March 20.

The British government is due to decide later this week whether to extend its lockdown — but without Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is recuperating at his countryside retreat after saying his battle with coronavirus “could have gone either way”.

Britain recorded 717 deaths on Monday, a slight drop from the day before, taking the toll to over 11,000. Daily deaths tolls are often lower on Mondays as weekend fatalities have not been collected.

“A quarantine will not be necessary,” Trump tweeted, some eight hours after he stunned the New York metropolitan region, the epicenter of the US coronavirus outbreak, with a proposal to place it under quarantine to prevent residents from leaving.

Trump had indicated earlier he was responding to worries in other states, particularly Florida, that travelers from the greater New York city area could spread COVID-19 in their communities.

He told reporters that “heavily infected” New Yorkers were a threat to Florida, a popular southern holiday destination for people in the northeast.

New York state has reported more than 53,000 cases of the new coronavirus, out of more than 122,000 nationwide.

New York city alone reported a surge of 155 deaths Saturday, taking the city’s total to 617, more than one-quarter of the 2,147 across the United States, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Neighboring New Jersey has reported over 11,100 COVID-19 cases.

A lockdown on the area like the one Trump was weighing would have been the harshest measure yet taken by the US government to slow the spread of the disease.

Cuomo told earlier that a lockdown on travel in and out of the global financial and trade hub would not be legal or make sense — especially since there are already local controls on movements.

“Why you would want to just create total pandemonium on top of a pandemic, I have no idea,” he said.

“New York city, New Jersey and southern Connecticut is the global capital of the world for commerce and for finance,” said Lamont.

“If you care as much as the president does about getting this economy going again, you’ve got to be very careful about what you say and what you don’t say.”

Yet Trump appeared to be echoing concerns in other states that visiting New Yorkers could exacerbate the spread of coronavirus.

In Rhode Island, about 130 miles (210 kilometers) northeast of New York city, police and national guard were knocking on doors of homes where cars had New York license plates to remind them of a requirement to self-quarantine.

Florida has a large population of retirees, but has so far only reported slightly more than 4,000 coronavirus cases.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a political ally of Trump, issued executive orders this week mandating two-week self-quarantines for anyone arriving or recently arrived from New York and Louisiana, another US hotbed of the disease.