On Monday, September 14, Hans Krueger, director of the World Health Organization’s European division, announced that “things are going to get even more serious, and in October, November, we’re going to see a high mortality rate from the new coronavirus”. As Italy, the United Kingdom, and many other European countries are stepping up epidemic preparedness measures, WHO is warning Europe against a second wave of deaths coming in the fall.
The neo-coronavirus pandemic has now claimed more than 924,000 lives worldwide, with Israel becoming the first country to restart a national ban. WHO Europe says the 55 countries in its observation region as a whole are seeing an increase of 400-500 deaths per day, about the same as since the beginning of June. But the daily increase in the number of confirmed infections hit a peak of 51,000 on Friday, which is already above the April peak, with the most worrisome daily increases in Spain and France. Although testing is now being stepped up in European countries, it “is not the whole reason for the spike in infections,” the WHO said.
European Director Krueger added, “People often say, ‘The vaccine will end the pandemic! But of course that’s not possible…” Regarding prevention, he argued that a blanket national ban is not worth advocating and should be more targeted. For example, the UK has already banned gatherings of more than six people (from different families), both outdoors and indoors, except at school, work, weddings and funerals; from Tuesday, Birmingham, the UK’s second most populous city, will ban all gatherings between friends and family (who do not live under the same roof), so that people can continue to go to cafes, restaurants, shopping malls and other places. In addition, Austria requires people to wear masks in all public buildings starting today, and Italy has announced the return of students to school under an extremely strict epidemic prevention policy.
On the same day, the European Commission announced that Germany, Italy, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Ireland, and Latvia have begun testing an application for uniform tracking of new crowns, which would allow people to send positive test results or receive alerts that they may have come into contact with dangerous people while moving freely across internal borders. The “StopCovid” application that has been rolled out in France is not part of the EU’s harmonized virus-tracking program because of its design structure and compatibility issues.
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