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Tunisia emerges healthy from six-week lockdown

Tunisia has started to ease lockdown measures, pointing to the relative success of the restrictions it imposed early on in the pandemic.
A general view shows a empty street in Sidi Bou Said, an attractive tourist destination, as the country extended the lockdown by two weeks to contain the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Tunis, Tunisia April 1, 2020. REUTERS/Zoubeir Souissi - RC2RVF9FUCSQ

TUNIS, Tunisia — As global coronavirus cases began to climb in March, Tunisia had reason for alarm. Located just across the Mediterranean Sea from Italy — an early virus hot spot — and host to thousands of international travelers and residents, the North African country feared it could be the next to suffer a major wave of infections that would push its fragile health care system to a breaking point.

But now, some six weeks after lockdown measures were imposed, Tunisia seems to have kept the virus at bay, recording fewer and fewer new infections and readying to open back up.

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