May 15 (UPI) -- Russian officials said Friday more than 10,000 new coronavirus cases have been reported and the central Italian government is set to end inter-regional travel restrictions.
Friday was the 12th consecutive day at least 10,000 new cases were reported in Russia, according to Johns Hopkins University. Moscow's anti-coronavirus crisis center said the new figure is 10,598, which pushed the total count to nearly 263,000 -- the world's second-highest count.
Almost half of the new cases are in Moscow, where Mayor Sergei Sobyanin warned that lifting lockdown restrictions too quickly could lead to a second outbreak.
"A premature withdrawal of the restrictions carries a genuine risk of another wave of the pandemic," Sobyanin wrote in a blog post. "Unjustified prolongation [of the restrictions] would also impact people in the roughest way."
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Russian President Vladimir Putin this week ended a nationwide "non-working period" but extended the authority of regional governors to impose local restrictions as health conditions dictate.
More than 4.4 million cases and 302,000 deaths have been reported worldwide since the start of the pandemic.
In Italy, domestic travel will be allowed after June 3, according to a draft decree to be considered by government ministers on Friday. It declares that nationwide restrictions will be removed, with only local rules in various parts to remain, the daily Corriere della Sera reported.
Germany officially entered a recession Friday as the Federal Statistics Office published first-quarter economic data showing the nation's economy shrank by 2.2 percent.
The sizable contraction -- the largest since the financial crisis -- was blamed on the coronavirus pandemic and follows a contraction of 0.1 percent in the last quarter of 2019.
China on Friday marked a full month without a single death due to the coronavirus; the last reported death was April 14.
Four new cases were reported, all locally transmitted within a cluster in northeastern Jilin province.
