Long after lockdown has been lifted, everybody may still be social distancing, warns the World Health Organization. In a week that's seen new outbreaks of the virus dampen the mood in countries like France where confinement has been eased, the panel of FRANCE 24's François Picard asks about testing, contact tracing and whether national interests are hampering the race to find effective remedies and a vaccine against the coronavirus.

What's West Africa learned since the Ebola pandemic? When's the right moment to ease lockdown? What are the conditions for staging elections during the current crisis? As the pressure builds to re-open the economy, François Picard's panel looks at the sanitary challenges for a region that's shown both resilience and clear signs that it should not rely on the outside world to fix weak public health sectors or – in the case of the Sahel – more outside help in the fight against radical insurgencies.

From anti-science conspiracy theories to state-sponsored disinformation, the United Nations warns that an "infodemic" of half-truths and falsehoods is undermining the effort to overcome the Covid-19 pandemic. How is social media driving anti-lockdown protests and just how much traction are they getting? François Picard and Deutsche Welle's Melinda Crane team up for a special edition of The Debate that asks about the role of fringe groups, social media giants and populist leaders everywhere – from the US and Brazil to China.

The right to go get a haircut and the reopening of many shops are providing rays of hope after 55 days of total lockdown in France. But the easing of confinement raises fresh challenges: François Picard's panel agrees the nation will have to assess why it's so far behind its neighbours on testing, why its face mask stockpile got so badly depleted over the past decade, and whether the government did right in taking the calculated risk to re-open schools. It's the entire top-down system that's under scrutiny in the FRANCE 24 Debate.

Will the arts ever be the same again? The magic of digital technology has kept us connected to movies, music and TV shows during confinement, while distribution giants like Amazon have kept up supplies of books and CDs. But scrapped are the big summer music and theatre festivals. Can artists, producers and distributors hold out? Will Covid-19 finish off already struggling neighbourhood movie theatres? François Picard's panel reacts to the French president's promise of support for the industry and reflects on how confinement alters creativity.

A choice between lives and livelihoods? Iranian authorities have gradually been easing confinement since April 11, this in a nation hit early and hard by Covid-19. Did they have to reopen mosques? Could they afford to keep the sanctions-squeezed country in lockdown and risk a complete collapse of the economy or does opening it up make it worse? Already there are signs of a resurgence of coronavirus. The show features Sanam Shantyaei's exclusive interview with a frontline medic in Tehran while Esfandyar Batmanghelidj and Behnam Ben Taleblu disagree on whether the US should ease sanctions.

Will air travel ever be the same? With Covid-19 stay-at-home orders killing business travel and tourism while authorities scramble to find ways to make flying safe again, when will the industry recover from what may turn out to be its worst crisis ever? Even if a vaccine and a treatment come sooner rather than later, will globalisation itself ever be the same? Will we still hop on a jet for a board meeting or take that cheap package holiday on a whim?

Is it already too late for the European Union to seize the initiative and prevent a repeat of the debt spiral triggered by the financial crisis in 2008? Former ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet and ex-Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis sharply disagree on whether there’s still time for the EU to reach a consensus and fill the global leadership vacuum in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. Ann Pettifor, co-founder of Jubilee 2000, argues that the best way out of the crisis is to put citizens to work at decent wages.

Just how big a gamble did Sweden take when it bucked the trend in Scandinavia and opted never to lock down the country? Its death toll now far exceeds that of its less populated neighbours, with the virus most notably tearing through nursing homes. The payoff, argue the Swedes, is that more than an estimated one quarter of the population is now immune to the coronavirus. Herd immunity was never an option in France, where hospitals were quickly overrun with patients. In past pandemics, citizens never considered lockdown as an option. What can history teach us about the present crisis?

Will tracking apps save the world or put humanity on the fast track to a surveillance state? Why has the French state delayed the roll-out of its plan? With citizens desperate to deconfine, talk turns to contact tracing. It will mean hiring an army of monitors to locate and isolate the infected and digital tracing to inform the public. But how do you prevent the system from getting hacked or governments from using the data to illegally spy on citizens?