EUROPE is facing yet another explosion of Covid cases with fears of 500,000 deaths over winter and intensive care units on the brink of collapse.
The region is “back at the epicentre” of the pandemic and it is the only place in the world where Covid infections are “still increasing”, World Health Organisation bosses warned.
Infection rates across Europe have risen by six per cent in the last week alone, hospital admissions have more than doubled, and virus-related deaths have rocketed by 12 per cent.
“We are, once again, at the epicentre,” WHO Europe director Hans Kluge told a press conference on Thursday.
He said the “current pace of transmission” across Europe was of “grave concern”.
Kluge warned that according to “one reliable projection” the current trajectory would mean “another half a million Covid deaths” by February.
Health ministers of all 16 states held crisis talks today as Germany reported its biggest daily increase in infections since the start of the pandemic with 37,120 cases – far exceeding its previous winter peak of 33,777 in December last year.
Health Minister Jens Spahn said the country of 83 million people was facing a “massive” pandemic among the unvaccinated and warned intensive care beds were starting to run out in some regions.
The country has already had to relocate some patients from regions with overburdened hospitals, Spahn added.
“Anyone who thinks they are young and invulnerable should talk to intensive care staff,” he said.
Booster vaccines will now be given to all German adults six months after their second dose to curb the rising infections.
“A fourth COVID wave is now with us in full force,” Spahn said. “We are at the start of a very difficult few weeks.”
On Friday, two German state leaders said a new lockdown might be needed unless the country takes immediate action to stop the surge in cases.
“If we take too much time now, it will end in a lockdown like last year,” the leader of the eastern state of Saxony, Michael Kretschmer, told Deutschlandfunk radio.
Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany’s Covid trend was “very worrying” and suggested she is in favour of tougher curbs targeting the unvaccinated.
Meanwhile, the latest data for the UK shows another 36,559 Covid cases have been recorded, bringing the seven-day average to 38,866.
However, it’s important to note that death rates remain relatively low across Europe – compared to previous levels before the rollout of the vaccine.
WHO bosses said hospital admission rates are higher in countries where fewer people have been jabbed.
Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are all struggling with rocketing case rates.
Slovakia’s health ministry confirmed 69 per cent of its 6,806 new infections on Friday were among unvaccinated people.
Covid jabs have now saved hundreds of thousands of lives, authorities said, and experts have continued to urge the unvaccinated to get jabbed to help curb infections and lower the risk of becoming seriously ill.
RISING CASES
According to data compiled by AFP, the number of new daily cases in Europe has been rising for nearly six weeks and the number of new deaths each day has been rising for just over seven weeks – with about 250,000 cases and 3,600 deaths per day.
Over the past seven days, Russia has recorded a whopping 8,162 deaths, followed by Ukraine with 3,819 deaths and Romania with 3,100 deaths.
The WHO’s Europe region – which spans 53 countries and territories and includes several nations in Central Asia – has now recorded 78 million cases since the start of the pandemic.
The tally exceeds the total number of cases in South East Asia, the Eastern Mediterranean region, the Western Pacific, and Africa, the WHO said.
Professor Andrew Preston, of the University of Bath’s biology and biochemistry department, said Europe’s surge could be down to a low uptake in vaccines and a lack of Covid restrictions.
“Some eastern European countries have very low vaccination rates and there you are seeing most of the cases in the unvaccinated,” he told Sky News.
“But in Germany yesterday they had a record number of cases and that probably reflects a pattern of what happens when you unlock with high levels of virus circulating.”
Dr Michael Ryan, of WHO’s health emergency programme, called on governments in Europe to “close the gap” in their vaccine rollouts in response to the spiking infections.
And WHO director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stressed the importance of keeping some restrictions in place to cut cases in the region.
“Vaccines alone will not end the pandemic,” he said. “Vaccines do not replace the need for public health measures which remain important in every country.”
