Europe crosses 150 K daily COVID mark
PARIS (Reuters) – Europe surpassed 150,000 daily coronavirus cases on Saturday just a week after reporting 100,000 cases for the first time, according to a Reuters tally, with countries such as France and Germany reporting record daily numbers of infections this week.
The World Health Organization ( WHO) reported a very concerning 44-percent rise in European cases over one week.
Global cases of the disease, which has killed more than 1.1 million people around the world, have been soaring beyond levels seen in the first wave earlier this year, when many countries resorted to national lockdowns to get control of the crisis.
Much of Europe has tightened curbs including measures such as shutting or ordering early closing of bars, but now the surging infection rates are also testing governments’ resolve to keep schools and non-COVID medical care going.
Globally, cases rose by more than 400,000 for the first time late on Friday, a record one-day increase.
As a region, Europe is reporting more daily cases than India, Brazil and the United States combined. The increase is partly explained by far more testing than was done in the first wave of the pandemic.
The United Kingdom, France, Russia, Netherlands, Germany and Spain accounted for about half of Europe’s new cases this week, according to a Reuters tally.
From Saturday evening, Paris and several other French cities went under a nighttime curfew that will last at least a month. England is banning mixed household gatherings in the capital and other areas, and Italy’s most populous region is limiting bar openings and suspending sports events.
France, which is reporting the highest seven-day average of new cases in Europe with 21,210 infections per day, reported a record 30,621 cases on Thursday, according to the tally.
In the past seven days it has registered nearly 142,800 new infections, more than the 132,430 registered during the entire two-month lockdown from mid-March to mid-May.