Europe’s second wave of the coronavirus pandemic is accelerating, forcing countries to impose ever-more social-distancing rules in a bid to avoid a return to full-blown lockdowns.
France announced a daily record for coronavirus infections, with confirmed infections reaching over 52,000 on Sunday, compared with nearly 84,000 confirmed cases in the U.S. on Saturday, whose population is around five times bigger.
Italy, struggling with an explosive rise in infections, imposed the toughest restrictions on its population since ending its lockdown, including the closure of all bars and restaurants at 6 p.m. In Spain, the government announced a state of emergency, as it did in March, giving national authorities greater powers to impose social-distancing and emergency health-care policies.
Daily confirmed infections in Europe, which overtook the U.S.’s daily detected infections during October, are threatening to overwhelm European countries’ capacity to test, trace and isolate virus carriers, leading authorities and health experts to warn that the pandemic could intensify. Governments are hoping that last-ditch measures such as curbs on socializing and nightlife can reduce contagion again without strangling Europe’s economic recovery.
A dramatic reversal in recent weeks has undermined Europe’s hard-won achievement in curbing contagion through economically painful lockdowns this spring. Covid-19 infections were significantly lower than in the U.S. this summer, but have rebounded thanks to factors including shortcomings in testing and contact-tracing systems, fatigue with social-distancing precautions and a particular relaxation of behavior among younger people.
French National police talked to a cyclist at the start of curfew in Toulouse, France, on Saturday.
Photo:
fred scheiber/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
If Europe’s escalating restrictions, from curfews to local travel bans, fail to slow contagion, the continent will be left with a choice between a return to lockdowns or letting the pandemic take its course, with potentially disastrous effects for overstretched health-care systems.
So far, however, deaths from Covid-19’s second wave are a fraction of Europe’s heavy death toll in March and April. Many recently infected people have no or only light symptoms. Earlier detection and treatment, as well as improved public awareness and medical knowledge, are helping to contain the number of severely ill cases.
But doctors and public-health experts warn that uncontrolled contagion would eventually revive the pressure on hospitals that led to a shortage of intensive-care beds in some of Europe’s hardest-hit cities this spring. Some hospitals in Madrid, Paris and other hot spots are already warning of an unsustainable rise in patients.
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