MADRID, April 27 (CNA) - Europe's hardest-hit countries reported promising drops in coronavirus daily death tolls on Sunday (Apr 26), as governments around the world started peeling back lockdown measures in a bid to restore normal life and resuscitate crippled economies.

Children in Spain were allowed outside for the first time in six weeks on Sunday, while hairdressers and other shops are set to reopen in Switzerland this week.

Badly-hit Italy said many businesses would be able to resume next week and France planned to announce how it would start the slow crawl back to normality.

Leaders around the world are seeking to gradually reverse lockdowns while avoiding a dreaded second wave of infections amid warnings from the World Health Organization that recovered people might not be immune to reinfection.

The coronavirus pandemic has forced more than half of humanity into lockdown, upending life as we know it and tipping the global economy toward a recession not seen in decades.

Close to 203,000 people have died from the virus since it first emerged in China in December - well over half in Europe - and more than 2.9 million cases have been recorded, according to an AFP tally.

But Europe's worst-hit countries - Italy, Spain, France and Britain - all reported drops in daily fatality rates on Sunday, a sign the peak of the weeks-long crisis may have passed.

Britain's daily tally was the lowest since Mar 31, while Italy and Spain's were the lowest in a month. France's toll was a drop of more than a third on the previous day's figures.

The numbers came in as Spanish families embraced new rules allowing children outside for the first time since mid-March, with kids hopping on bicycles and scooters on the streets of Madrid - some wearing small masks and gloves.

"They are super excited, very, very impatient. They were up at 6.30am, saying 'We are going out, We are going out!'," Inmaculada Paredes told AFP, readying to take her seven- and four-year-old kids outdoors.

Six-year-old Ricardo said it was "very good" to be out after a runaround with his younger sister in the city.

"We played hide and seek, we raced. We found a ladybug that was lost and we put it in among the ants," he told AFP.

Under the revised rules, children are allowed out once per day between 9.00am and 9.00pm, but cannot venture more than one kilometre from their homes.

With more than 23,000 fatalities, Spain has the third highest death toll in the world after Italy's 26,000 and more than 53,000 in the United States.