European leaders are blunt: Vaccines won't come soon enough

SOAVE, Italy (AP) — In separate, stark warnings, two major European leaders have bluntly told their citizens that the world needs to adapt to live with the coronavirus and cannot wait to be saved by the development of a vaccine.

The comments by Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson came as both nations around the world and U.S. states are struggling with the increasing need to reactivate economies blindsided by the pandemic. With 36 million people newly unemployed in the U.S. alone, that economic pressure is building even as authorities acknowledge the risks of kicking off new waves of infections and deaths from a virus that people have no immunity to.

Britain and Italy have recorded the most coronavirus deaths in the world after the U.S.

Pushed hard by Italy's regional leaders and weeks in advance of an earlier timetable, Conte is allowing restaurants, bars and beach facilities to open Monday, the same day that church services can resume.

’’We are facing a calculated risk, in the awareness ... that the epidemiological curve could go back up," Conte said late Saturday. “We are confronting this risk, and we need to accept it, otherwise we would never be able to relaunch.”

Conte added that Italy could "not afford” to wait until a vaccine was developed. Health experts have said the world could be months, if not years, away from having a vaccine available to everyone despite the scientific gold rush now on to create a coronavirus vaccine — or vaccines.

“We would find ourselves with our social and productive fabric heavily damaged,” Conte said.

Italy’s economy is forecast to contract 9% this year due to the impact of the coronavirus, which has prompted Europe’s longest strictest lockdown.

For his part, British...