Lockdowns return to Europe as virus surges
Toughest restrictions loom again, including for double jabbed, to counter fourth wave
EUROPE faced the return of full lockdowns yesterday as the fourth wave of Covid-19 brought with it sweeping restrictions – even for the vaccinated.
Angela Merkel last night left the door open to lockdown restrictions, saying “unspecified” measures would be introduced in the worst-hit states.
“It is absolutely time to act,” the German chancellor said, as she announced measures stopping the unvaccinated visiting bars, restaurants and theatres if hospitalisation rates got too high.
If the rates rise further, governors in Germany would be empowered to take more draconian measures, including against the fully vaccinated.
Neighbouring Austria, which this week became the first European country to lock down the unvaccinated, will hold talks over a full federal shutdown today, amid unconfirmed reports of corpses being stored in overcrowded hospital corridors.
The states of Salzburg and Upper Austria will enter a month-long full lockdown next week, regardless of the outcome of those talks between regional leaders and Alexander Schallenberg, the chancellor. The country has some of the lowest vaccination rates in western Europe.
The problem is even more acute in parts of eastern Europe, where endemic corruption has led to distrust in the medical system.
The European Medicines Agency yesterday blamed people not getting jabbed and the delta variant for putting pressure on intensive care units. Dr Marco Cavaleri, of the agency, warned: “We are in the midst of what we call the fourth wave.”
The UK recorded 46,807 cases yesterday, the highest since Oct 22, but hospi- talisations remained low compared with the peak of the pandemic. Rates among schoolchildren have risen sharply and local authorities have been given the power to impose masks in secondary schools.
In France, Spain, Portugal and Italy cases remain low but are rising.
Germany recorded 65,371 new cases – another new record – with a weeklong rate of 337 per 100,000 people, which is slightly more than the UK’S.
Under plans unveiled by Mrs Merkel last night, German regions will introduce restrictions on a tiered system depending on hospital capacity.
Access to restaurants, bars, gyms, cinemas and events will be restricted to those who can show proof of recovery or vaccination. In regions where the virus is particularly rife, vaccinated people will also have to show a recent negative test. The worst regions could impose lockdowns or other unspecified restrictions on the vaccinated.
Austria recorded more than 15,000 new cases yesterday, and has a sevenday incidence of 989 per 100,000 inhabitants, nearly three times as high as the UK. Roughly two thirds of Austria’s population are fully vaccinated, although demand for jabs rose dramatically this week after new restrictions on the unvaccinated were introduced.
Salzburg and Upper Austria will go it alone and close non-essential shops, close schools apart from for children of key workers and largely confine people to their homes.
Leandros Giomataris, 26, a restaurant manager in downtown Linz, said: “We were closed for seven months, what do we do with our staff now?”
A major anti-lockdown rally is planned for tomorrow in Vienna. Slovakia and the Czech Republic have both introduced harsher restrictions, and the Netherlands is expected to follow suit.
When the Prime Minister said he could see “storm clouds” gathering over parts of continental Europe, he wasn’t wrong. Europe is again at the epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic with a new wave of infections that has swept in from the East now forcing new lockdowns and pushing hospitals to the brink in parts of western Europe.
The new surge could lead to almost 450,000 extra deaths before February, the World Health Organisation warned earlier this month.
Austria is currently battling one of its most severe outbreaks yet and yesterday parts of its health system were coming under severe pressure.
Hospitals in Salzburg and Upper Austria are overloaded and there were unconfirmed reports of corpses being stored in corridors. “You put dead corona patients in an airtight plastic bag, zip it shut, and that’s it,” an ICU nurse told local press.
Austria became the first European country to impose a nationwide lockdown on the unvaccinated earlier this week affecting some two million people, and a full lockdown could be reimposed in Salzburg and Upper Austria from Monday.
‘We are going to have a really terrible Christmas if we don’t take counter-measures now’
Germany, which like Austria has pockets where vaccine rates are dangerously low, is also battling a surge in cases. Hospitals are struggling to find space for new patients, Lothar Wieler, the head of the Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s national disease control centre, warned yesterday. “We are heading toward a serious emergency,” Mr Wielers said. “We are going to have a really terrible Christmas if we don’t take countermeasures now.”
‘You put dead corona patients in an airtight plastic bag, zip it shut, and that’s it’
New wave
Europe’s fourth wave started in September in eastern Europe where vaccine rates in many countries are spectacularly poor and few, if any, restrictions were in place.
It has dramatically gathered pace in western Europe as colder weather has pushed people indoors in recent weeks, again hitting hardest where vaccine rates are low. Vaccine scepticism is driven by different factors, note experts. In eastern
Europe, the legacy of communism has eroded trust in the state. And in German-speaking countries, trust in the healing power of nature is common and is thought to have slowed vaccine take-up in some areas.
Saxony has the lowest vaccination rate of all German states with just 57.6 per cent of the population being fully vaccinated. But it is not only Germanspeaking countries that have been hit – or areas with low vaccination rates.
The Netherlands, where 73 per cent of the population is fully vaccinated, last week imposed a partial lockdown after a surge in cases, with restaurants and pubs forced to close from 8pm and large events banned. Dutch virologists have now proposed extending school holidays over Christmas to slow infections in children. Infections in children aged five to nine jumped almost 85 per cent in the week to Nov 16. “Keeping primary schools closed for longer is an effective way to keep the virus under control,” Ger Rijkers, an immunologist, said.
In France, Spain, Portugal and Italy cases remain low but are rising.
Explanations for these lower rates vary from the south of Europe benefiting from warmer weather for longer to non-pharmaceutical interventions such as vaccine passports and masks being more consistently deployed and adhered to.
But perhaps most persuasive for Spain and Portugal are their high vaccination rates, which at over 80 per cent of the population, are far above those in the UK, Austria and Germany. The European Centre for Disease
Prevention and Control puts the new wave down to the more transmissible delta variant, middling vaccination rates and a relaxation of social distancing measures in some European countries. It predicts that only countries with vaccination rates of over 80 per cent – such as Spain, Portugal and Malta – will escape pressures over winter.
UK in ‘better position’
When Boris Johnson talked of storm clouds gathering over continental Europe last week, he implied the UK could also be next. But most experts think this unlikely. Cases have been high here since the summer, with more than 14,000 Covid deaths recorded since Freedom Day on July 19. Hospital admissions, which have fluctuated at between 700 and 100 a day for nearly four months now, are also now starting to trend down as boosters take effect.
Paul Hunter, a professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia, said: “The UK is now in a better position in terms of immunity than most of Europe because we’ve had a lot of infections and we’re now rolling out the booster jab.”
Restrictions in the form of vaccine passports and mask mandates are in place again in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland but England remains restriction-free. Most experts think this is only likely to change if a new Covid variant or a flu epidemic were to suddenly start to overwhelm hospitals.
Boris Johnson issued a prescient warning this week that storm clouds were gathering over the Continent in the shape of a new Covid surge. The tempest has duly arrived. In Germany, cases are running at record levels and hospitals in Bavaria are under such pressure that patients are being transferred to neighbouring countries for treatment. In a country that prides itself on a high number of intensive care beds per capita, that is a distinctly worrying development.
This is happening even though Germany has been operating tight protocols covering association, passporting and mask-wearing. The same can be said of many Eastern European countries and the wave is spreading westwards fast. The head of Germany’s disease control centre said Europe was heading for a “serious emergency” and a “terrible Christmas” unless countermeasures were taken.
We all know what they are and lockdowns, either in full or in part, are being implemented in countries across Europe. Inevitably, there will be demands for this country to emulate what is happening on the Continent. Yet arguably, they should have been following us. Cases have been higher in the UK than elsewhere in Europe for some time but they have not overwhelmed the NHS yet because the vaccine programme has been effective in reducing serious illness and hospitalisations. Other countries have relied more on supposedly mitigating measures that have not stopped the virus spreading and have had a lower take-up of vaccines.
The same people who a few weeks ago were demanding Covid Plan B because European cases were so much lower than here will soon be insisting we follow the EU into tough new controls because cases are now so much higher. Perhaps they might pause and think that these restrictions do not actually work, unlike the vaccine. With more than 12 million people in the UK triple-jabbed there is no more protection available beyond encouraging – or requiring – the minority of people who remain resistant to accept the vaccine.
The next few weeks will test to the limit Mr Johnson’s ability to withstand the pressure he is certain to face either to implement Plan B or order yet another disastrous Christmas lockdown. To force one on the country when it was unvaccinated was one thing; to do so when most people have been jabbed would be reprehensible.