Europe’s COVID surge could be ‘window into the future’
Global health leaders are urging caution as the holiday season gets underway, pointing to a 23 percent spike in coronavirus cases across the Americas in the past week, a surge that follows spikes in Europe — which officials warn could be a “window into the future for the Americas.”
“Time and again, we’ve seen how the infection dynamics in Europe are mirrored here several weeks later,” Carissa Etienne, director of the Pan American Health Organization, said during a Wednesday briefing. “The future is unfolding before us, and it must be a wake-up call for our region because we are even more vulnerable.”
On the same day, the head of the World Health Organization urged against complacency, expressing concern about a “false sense of security that vaccines have ended the pandemic and that people who are vaccinated do not need to take any other precautions.”
WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: “While Europe is again the epicenter of the pandemic, no country or region is out of the woods.”
He underlined the trouble in Europe, where the agency reports nearly 60 percent of worldwide coronavirus deaths were concentrated from Nov. 15 to 21. In that time, the WHO said new cases jumped 11 percent. Countries in Europe have been implementing new lockdowns and restrictions - an effort to reduce numbers ahead of the endof-year holidays.
The PAHO pointed to upward trends in new cases in the United States and Canada, with a “two-to-three-fold increase in new infections over the last week” in Canada’s Yukon and Northwest territories.
In the United States, new daily reported cases have increased 8 percent in the past week, and deaths have grown 9 percent, according to tracking by The Washington Post. In that time, hospitalizations have inched up 6 percent. The situation is particularly dire in pockets of the nation. In Michigan, which leads the nation in COVID hospitalizations, the unvaccinated COVID-19 patients are swarming emergency departments and driving capacity to grueling levels.
In Canada, there was a 5 percent increase as of Wednesday in new confirmed cases over the past two weeks, compared with the previous two weeks, according to Our World in Data, which cites data gathered by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
During the Thanksgiving eve briefing, health officials urged that mitigation measures — including mask-wearing, social distancing and staying away from crowds — should be kept up regardless of vaccination status.
“During these holiday periods, not just for Thanksgiving in the U.S., of course, but through the end of the year, it’s really important that all of us continue to take measures to keep us and our loved ones safe,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, an epidemiologist leading WHO’s coronavirus response during the briefing.
In the United States, slightly more than 59 percent of the entire population is fully vaccinated, according to tracking by The Post. More than 19 percent have been fully vaccinated and have received a booster shot.