Europe Is Getting Hit by Covid Resurgence After Rushed Exit
Europe Is Getting Caught by a Covid Resurgence After Rushed Exit
(Bloomberg) -- Europe tried to leave Covid-19 behind, but the rush to unwind restrictions is now setting the stage for a revival of pandemic risks.
Accelerated by the emergence of BA.2 -- a more-transmissible strain of the omicron variant -- the virus has spread rapidly. Germany on Tuesday set a fresh record for infection rates for the four straight day. Austria has also reached new highs, while cases in the Netherlands have doubled since lifting curbs on Feb. 25.
Most authorities have shrugged off the surge, showing little appetite to re-impose curbs after easing measures just a few weeks ago. But the virus threatens to cause problems anyway, with businesses and schools disrupted as people call in sick.
“The messaging from politicians is encouraging many people who were taking precautions to mix with others,” said Martin McKee, professor of public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. “It does seem very courageous, and indeed risky, to assume that the pandemic is over.”
The timing could hardly be worse. Europe can ill afford further strain as the region grapples with a cost-of-living crisis, which the war in Ukraine threatens to intensify as the conflict sends food and gas prices soaring.
“Lately we are all dealing with the war in Ukraine and high prices. But the coronavirus is still here,” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who tested positive for Covid on Monday, said in an Instagram post.
Despite soaring infections, Germany is sticking with plans to let most nationwide restrictions expire on Sunday, with the number of Covid cases in intensive-care units at less than half of peak levels.
Still, Health Minister Karl Lauterbach -- a Harvard-trained epidemiologist -- is pushing against a widespread opening and urging Germany’s 16 states to implement “hot spot” rules that allow for targeted curbs locally.
“We’re not in a situation where we could let all measures drop,” he said Tuesday in an interview with ARD television. “We have a very frightening situation in Germany at the moment.”
In a sign of the softer approach, Austria last week suspended a law that made coronavirus vaccinations mandatory, stepping back from one of Europe’s strictest measures despite record infections.
In France, millions of high school students and teachers ditched masks for the first time in almost two years on Monday. England will drop its last restrictions on Thursday and end free mass testing on April 1.
London’s Heathrow Airport, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd. are dropping mask requirements. Homeware retailer Wilko Ltd. even went so far as to advise staff that they no longer needed to stay home if they test positive, but has since toned down the policy after a backlash.
Despite official reluctance to tighten measures, the pandemic is becoming increasingly evident on the ground.
What Bloomberg Intelligence Says
“Rising Covid-19 infection rates won’t be a major issue for all -- as they’re unlikely to be long-lived -- but countries such as China with zero-Covid-19 policies, low jab rates and suboptimal vaccines may be in trouble.”
Sam Fazeli, director of EMEA industry research
Covid Is on the Rise in Many Countries; Only Some Should Worry
The number of people with Covid in English hospitals has risen above 10,000, up 18% from a week earlier, according to the National Health Service. Many of these are incidental cases, however, meaning they’re primarily in the hospital for another reason.
In Italy, which has gone slower than most other European countries in unwinding restrictions, about 120,000 school kids, some 2.5% of the total, were in quarantine during the week that ended March 5 -- the latest data available from the Education Ministry. In the southern town of Cerchiara di Calabria, the mayor even closed all schools this week due to rising infections.
The renewed outbreak is prompting an ad-hoc revival of measures to contain the spread. At Octave et Arpege, a music and theater school in Paris, the director asked families on Monday to have children wear masks and follow other hygiene rules. At a Cirque Zingaro performance on Sunday, about half of the audience opted to keep masks on even though they’re no longer mandatory.
In Germany, the record infections means there’s “the danger of long Covid for more people than ever before,” Lauterbach said on Twitter on Monday. “Two hundred deaths per day. Soon it could be more.”
©2022 Bloomberg L.P.
