San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
POLAND’S PRESIDENT TESTS POSITIVE FOR CORONAVIRUS
Belgium’s surge leaves hospitals, schools scrambling
Polish President Andrzej Duda says he feels well despite testing positive for the coronavirus, and he apologized Saturday to everyone who must quarantine because they had contact with him.
Duda, 48, said in a recording published on Twitter that he was experiencing no COVID-19 symptoms “but unfortunately, the test result is absolutely unambiguous.”
“I would like to apologize to all those who are exposed to quarantine procedures because of meeting me in recent days,” he said. “If I had had any symptoms of coronavirus, please believe me, all meetings would have been canceled.”
Duda’s diagnosis comes amid a huge surge in confirmed new cases of COVID-19 and virus-related deaths in Poland, a nation of 38 million that saw very low infection rates in the spring.
Poland on Saturday reported 13,628 new confirmed cases and a record daily number of COVID-19 deaths, 179. The daily case count was the nation’s second-highest of the pandemic after a record number set Friday.
The surge in cases is prevalent across Europe.
In Belgium, so many people are sick or quarantining that there aren’t enough police on the streets, teachers in classrooms or medical staff in hospitals.
In some hospitals, doctors and nurses who have tested positive but don’t have symptoms are being asked to keep working, because so many others are out sick with COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. School principals are marshaling secretaries and parent volunteers to replace falling ranks of teachers.
“The situation is more serious” than in April, Christie Morreale, health minister of the French-speaking region of Belgium, told the RTL broadcaster on Friday, after announcing a “partial lockdown” alongside other regional leaders. “If you are a nurse and you have a few hours to dedicate in a nursing home or a hospital, if you’re a nursing student, a medical student, an educator, they have need of support.”
Unlike in the spring, there are enough masks and gowns to go around. But months of preparation haven’t been able to avert a shortage of people. And a government decision to remove a mask mandate and loosen restrictions on social contacts this month has contributed to an acceleration of the virus.
Belgium’s infection rate is second only to the Czech Republic in the European Union and five times higher than in the United States.
The country’s testing infrastructure is overloaded. As of this past week, Belgium is no longer testing people without symptoms, even if they may have been exposed.
This is what it means to be close to a coronavirus “tsunami” — a word used in northern Italy in the spring and deployed this past week by Belgian Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke, who said that the virus could soon escape authorities’ control.
Vandenbroucke’s statement came before Foreign Minister Sophie Wilmès — who stepped down as prime minister earlier this month — was admitted into an intensive care unit with COVID-19 on Wednesday. Wilmès is 45 and otherwise healthy.