Covid-19 Round up: Pandemic flares up again around Europe
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More than half of the French Departments have been designated as red zones, Madrid has restricted movement for almost one million persons while the UK is looking into further localised lockdowns. The second wave of the coronavirus pandemic continues to threaten Europe’s recovery, with countries battling to keep schools and businesses open while at the same time engaging in a race against time to isolate newly-infected patients.
France has been reporting more than 10,000 daily new cases for a number of days and more than 50 departments have been indicated as locations where the virus was actively circulating, a designation which allows Mayors to increase restrictions, which however have not yet been extended to wider lockdowns experienced in Spring.
Concern has also increased in the United Kingdom, despite the numbers being lower than those on the European mainland. Boris Johnson’s scientific advisors have issued a stark warning that Britain will face an exponentially growing death rate from COVID-19 within weeks unless urgent action is taken to halt a rapidly spreading second wave of the outbreak, the country’s senior medics said on Monday.
The United Kingdom already has the biggest official COVID-19 death toll in Europe – and the fifth largest in the world – while it is borrowing record amounts in an attempt to pump emergency money through the damaged economy.
But new COVID-19 cases are rising by at least 6,000 per day in Britain, according to week-old data, hospital admissions are doubling every eight days, and the testing system is buckling.
Chris Whitty, the government’s chief medical officer, and Patrick Vallance, its chief scientific adviser, cautioned that if left unrestricted the epidemic would reach 50,000 new cases per day by mid-October in the United Kingdom.
In Munich, the use of the facemask will be mandatory in all public locations in the open, while group gatherings have been reduced to five.
The weekly number of new COVID-19 cases in the United States rose last week for the first time after falling for eight straight weeks, an increase that health experts attributed to schools reopening and parties over the Labor Day holiday.
