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| - Poland will reopen hotels, shopping centres and childcare facilities next week, the prime minister said Wednesday, outlining steps to ease the heavy toll the coronavirus lockdown is taking on the country's once vibrant economy. Hotels, malls and some museums will reopen on May 4, while childcare facilities will resume work two days later, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said in Warsaw. Wearing masks outdoors and social distancing would still be mandatory, he added, appealing for "social discipline" on the "bumpy road to flattening the curve" of infection and death. "We're opening up the economy significantly, but we're not loosening safety rules by an inch," Morawiecki said, adding that stores would continue to allow only one person per 15 square meters (yards). "We can't be irresponsible, I ask you to maintain social discipline," he said. Poles have been required to stay home since last month to stem the spread of the coronavirus, which officials say has killed 606 people and infected more than 12,000 in the EU country of 38 million people. The numbers put Poland "in a very reassuring situation, far from the extremes in which Belgium, Italy or Spain find themselves," he added. Once among the EU's most rapidly expanding economies, growth in Poland is set to shrink by 3.4 percent this year, according to a revised government projection, down from an expansion of 3.7 percent of GDP forecast prior to the pandemic. Morawiecki also said that his government wants a presidential election due in May to go ahead by postal ballot, despite widespread criticism that it will be neither free, fair, legal nor safe. It was unclear on Wednesday whether Morawiecki's governing right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party would scrape together enough votes to pass legislation allowing the postal ballot at a May 7 sitting of parliament. Polls show that PiS-allied incumbent President Andrzej Duda could receive 50 percent of the vote for a likely round one victory. But only one in four voters want the election to go ahead as scheduled on May 10, according to a fresh opinion poll. Liberal opposition leaders have called on voters to boycott the election, should it go ahead as scheduled. bo-mas/lc
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