A tentative easing around the world of coronavirus lockdowns gathered pace Saturday with the reopening in India of neighborhood stores that many of the country’s 1.3 billion people rely on for everything from cold drinks to mobile phone data cards, the AP reports. In the US, the states of Georgia, Oklahoma, and Alaska have begun loosening lockdown orders on their pandemic-wounded businesses, even as the confirmed US death toll from the coronavirus soared past 50,000 and health experts warned that such steps might be coming too soon. For more:

The relaxation of the Indian lockdown came with major caveats. It did not apply to hundreds of quarantined towns and other places hit hardest by the outbreak that has killed at least 775 people in the country and terrified its multitudes of poor who live in slum conditions too crowded for social distancing. Shopping malls also stayed closed nationwide.