The coronavirus continues to rage through Europe and is seeing a resurgence in many countries where rates had dropped over the past months, with governments taking a variety of measures to contain the spread.
In the UK, 12,872 new cases were recorded on Saturday, over double the average daily increase over the past week, taking the country to almost half a million total infections confirmed since the outbreak of the pandemic. Over 42,000 people have died of coronavirus-related complications in Britain, and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned on Sunday that “it’s going to continue to be bumpy” until the end of the secular year, and “it may even be bumpy beyond … This could be a very tough winter for all of us, but there is a way through … we can do it and do it together,” he insisted, if we act “fearlessly but with common sense” in following government guidelines.
France, too, is seeing an uptick in “cases”, with 16,972 new cases confirmed on Saturday, a new daily record, breaking last week’s record of 16,096 new cases in a single day.
Health Minister Olivier Veran warned on Sunday that there was a distinct possibility that Paris would return to full lockdown as early as Monday if the situation in the capital continued to deteriorate.
In Poland, the government reported 2,367 new cases on Saturday, the third consecutive day on which a new record high of daily diagnoses was recorded. In Italy, which until recently seemed to have rallied successfully from a disastrous spring with coronavirus, 2,844 new cases were recorded on Saturday, the highest daily increase since April 24.
In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel sounded a stark warning that if matters were not swiftly taken into hand, “we will have 19,200 infections per day” by the end of the year. Germany reported 2,673 new cases on Friday, the country’s highest daily increase since April 18. Merkel’s government is already clamping down on social gatherings, and has restricted private gatherings to 25 people each and public events to a maximum of 50 attendees. “I’m sure life as we know it will eventually return,” she said, in an attempt to sound a reassuring note, “but we have to be cautious for the meantime.”
In Britain, PM Johnson was characteristically optimistic for the long-term, despite his admittance that the short-term outlook was somewhat less than rosy. “If you ask me, do I think things can be significantly different by [the end of the year] – Yes, I do, and we’re working flat-out to achieve that,” he said, as quoted by The Independent. “If you talk to the scientists, they’re all virtually unanimous that by the spring things will be radically different and we’ll be in a different world because that is the normal cycle of a pandemic like this.”
Source: Nissan Tzur – Arutz Sheva