Europe’s Second Wave
COVID-19 Spikes on the Continent
The U.S. is by no means The only country experiencing a resurgence of COVID-19. Novel coronavirus cases in Europe hit over 1.7 million by late July, with 1,704,897 cases reported as of July 30 in the European Union/european Economic Area (EU/EEA) and the U.K., according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.
Fears over a second wave of the outbreak have been raised across Europe following recent spikes in cases in Spain, France and Germany. These nations reported increases in new infections ranging from 36 to 50 percent in the second half of July.
Spain
In the week from July 23 to 29, the country reported a total of 15,090 new infections, a more than 50 percent increase from the 10,057 total new cases reported a week earlier, according to data compiled by Worldometer.
New cases in Spain began to rise on a sharper incline starting in early July, about a couple of weeks after it reopened its borders in late June and ended its state of emergency.
Most of the recent new cases were reported to be in the northeast Catalonia, which is home to Barcelona, the capital of the region.
All nightclubs in the Catalonia region were ordered to close for 15 days, while a midnight curfew was imposed on bars in the greater Barcelona area and other towns around the city of Lleida that have become virus hotspots, the Associated Press (AP) reported.
Clubs in the southeast region of Murcia were also ordered to be shut unless venues have an outdoor terrace space for customers, The Local reported.
Mask rules were imposed in several regions requiring face coverings to be worn in public, while residents in several areas of the Catalan region, including Barcelona, were urged to remain at home, Reuters reported.
Spain was also removed from a “safe travel” list in the U.K., which issued a 14-day quarantine mandate for all those traveling from Spain, a popular vacation destination among Britons.
However, Spain’s Foreign Minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya told reporters Sunday: “Spain is safe, it is safe for Spaniards, it is safe for tourists.”
She noted the Spanish government will try to convince U.K. officials to exclude the Balearic and Canary islands of Spain from the quarantine mandate, claiming the prevalence of cases in those popular island destinations was much lower than the cases seen in the U.K., Reuters reported.
France
France reported 6,860 new cases in the week ending July 29, a spike of 36 percent compared to the previous week, according to data compiled by Worldometer.
The country’s R (reproductive) number, which represents the average number of people to whom an infected individual will pass the virus, has climbed to 1.3, French health authorities confirmed, AP reported.
“We have erased much of the progress that we’d achieved in the first weeks of lockdown-easing,” with
“We have erased much of the progress that we’d achieved in the first weeks of lockdown.”
locals reported to be making less of an effort to self isolate if they are infected, health officials noted.
French authorities have called for a “collective discipline,” across the country, asking residents to work from home and to get tested if they have any suspicions of infection, AP reported.
The French government also advised companies to “build a preventive stock of protective masks for 10 weeks to be able to deal with a potential resurgence of the pandemic,” Agence-france Presse (AFP)/ AP reported.
Employers were urged to “collectively ensure [they] have the necessary equipment to protect employees” in order to be able to perform their work duties, AFP/AP reported.
The number of active cases (those people currently infected who are being treated in the hospital or recovering at home) in France has also been mostly rising since early June, reaching nearly 74,000 by late July, which constitutes a third of the country’s total confirmed number of cases, according to data compiled by Worldometer.
Germany
The daily case count in Germany has also been rising since early July. From July 23 to 29, the country reported 4,341 new cases, an increase of roughly 35 percent compared to the previous week, Worldometer reports.
That trend line prompted Michael Kretschmer, premier of the eastern German state of Saxony, to claim “the second coronavirus wave is already here,” Germany’s Deutsche Welle (DW) reported.
“It is already taking place every day. We have new clusters of infection
every day which could become very high numbers,” Kretschmer told the Rheinische Post newspaper, according to DW.
By late July the latest seven-day average of Germany’s R number was at 1.13, up from 1.01 earlier in the month, according to a report published by Germany’s Robert Koch Institute (RKI).
The country also saw a sharp increase in new COVID cases from around 500 a day in early July to more than 800 at one point, ending the month (July 29) at nearly 700.
“This development is very worrying and will continue to be monitored very closely,” a spokeswoman told Germany’s Deutsche Presse-agentur Gmbh (DPA) news agency, DW reported. “A further exacerbation of the situation must be avoided.”
“We have to keep the situation under review. That is what the public would expect us to do.”
Over two-thirds of the country’s recent new cases were reported to be in the southeastern state of Bavaria, the southwestern state of Baden-württemberg and the western state of North Rhine-westphalia, RKI said. The report noted, “In the past few weeks, the number of districts that have not reported any COVID-19 cases over a period of seven days has decreased. In parallel, the incidence has risen in many states. This trend is concerning.”
Clusters of new infections have also been linked to larger gatherings, leisure activities, workplaces, visits to community and health facilities as well as travelers returning from abroad, according to the RKI, as some of these activities resume.
For instance, a German cruise ship, Mein Schiff 2, sailed from the port of Hamburg toward Norway in late July, marking the first voyage since the cruise industry was shut down amid the ongoing pandemic, AP reported-passengers were expected to remain at sea with no land stops before returning to Germany on Monday. The ship hosted 1,200 passengers on board, down from its normal capacity of 2,900, AP reported.
Last week, Norway also reintroduced a 10-day quarantine mandate for those arriving from Spain, while people in France have been advised not to travel to Catalonia, Reuters reported.
When asked whether quarantine requirements could also be issued for travelers returning from France and Germany, the U.K. Minister of State at the Department of Health and Social Care, Helen Whately, told the U.K.’S Sky News: “We have to keep the situation under review and I think that is what the public would expect us to do.
“If we see rates going up in a country where at the moment there is no need to quarantine... we would have to take action because we cannot take the risk of coronavirus being spread again across the U.K.,” she said.
Over 17 million people across the globe have been infected since the virus was first reported in Wuhan, China and, as of July 30, about 700,000 had died, according data from Johns Hopkins University.