Confirmed COVID-19 cases in Poland top 7,000

A total of 270 new coronavirus cases and 18 deaths were registered in Poland on Tuesday, bringing the total infections to 7,202 and the death toll to 251, the Ministry of Health said on Tuesday.

Although the number of diagnosed cases continue to rise, Polish government has decided to loosen coronavirus restrictions in coming days.

Poland will slowly begin to reopen its economy from April 19, said Health Minister Lukasz Szumowski on Tuesday morning, adding that if not for the isolation, the number of patients would be much higher.

In an interview with private radio broadcaster RMF FM, Szumowski said that the reopening of the economy is a good message, if one analyses the costs of the national isolation.

He also stated that without the isolation and national quarantine, Poland would have had tens of thousands of infections today.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has forecast in the spring edition of its comprehensive report, the World Economic Outlook, that Poland's economy will shrink by 4.6 percent this year after nearly three decades of uninterrupted growth.

In its October 2019 estimate, the IMF expected the Polish economy to grow by 3.1 percent in 2020.