Europe tightens up as infections soar
MARSEILLE: From medieval times onward, the Mediterranean port Marseille has known the lash of pestilence.
Three centuries ago, Marseille was the locus of Europe’s last pandemic of bubonic plague — the Black Death — which killed 100,000 people in and near the city, despite diseasefighting measures that included an intricate maritimequarantine system and a ‘‘plague wall’’ snaking across the surrounding countryside.
Now the novel coronavirus is stalking Marseille. After hospitalisations in France’s secondlargest city nearly tripled over the course of a month, reaching almost 180, the national Government in late
September imposed tougherthanelsewhere restrictions in Marseille, closing its restaurants and bars while allowing those in other parts of the country to remain open.
The Marseille measures were among a growing number of localised diseasefighting restrictions across Europe, where coronavirus infections are on the rise again, but where there’s little political appetite for national lockdowns such as those imposed in the northern hemisphere spring.
The result has been a patchwork of new rules that can vary not only from country to country, but also from one municipality or even neighbourhood to the next. Local officials in Madrid are fighting restrictions against travel in and out of the Spanish capital and its suburbs. Pubs in Glasgow and Edinburgh, Scotland’s biggest cities, can’t serve alcohol indoors. Starting this weekend, Berlin’s allnight club scene will have to shut down at the party’sjuststarting hour of 11pm.
With more than 1 million deaths worldwide, economies battered and daily life in nearly every corner of the globe upended by the pandemic, epidemiologists and economists alike say smallerscale targeted interventions — aimed at particular cities, or certain types of establishments — can work well at quelling smaller outbreaks before they become big ones. But they can also spur discord, division and an aggrieved sense of being singled out.
In Germany new cases hit highs not seen since April, as fears grow of another lockdown, which would imperil Europe’s biggest economy.
Germany’s new cases have climbed back up to more than 4000 a day. — TCA/Los Angeles