Europe has faced an alarming rise in COVID-19 cases, according to WHO Regional Director for Europe Hans Kluge, who has warned that the region could once again be “at the epicenter of a pandemic”.
ukraine , ukraingate , 5, november , 2021 – health
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Kluge said that the number of new Covid-19 cases in Europe per day is approaching a record level.
“Today, every country in Europe and Central Asia is facing a real threat of Covid-19 revival or is already struggling with it. The current pace in 53 countries is a matter of serious concern,” he told a media briefing on Thursday.
Last week, nearly 1.8 million new cases and 24,000 new deaths were reported. In Europe and Central Asia, there has been a 6% increase in coronavirus infections and a 12% increase in mortality from the previous week, Kluge said.
According to him, the region accounted for 59% of all cases worldwide and 48% of reported deaths last week.
If the region continues this trajectory, according to Kluge, by February 2022 there may be another 500,000 new deaths from Covid-19 in the region, and that 43 countries in the region will at some point face a high or extreme burden on hospitals.
Record cases
Over the past few months, there has been a sharp increase in the incidence in the UK, and in recent weeks the number of cases in mainland Europe has risen sharply, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as in Russia and France and Germany, which have expressed concern.
Germany reported nearly 34,000 new cases on Thursday, breaking the record set in December 2020, according to Deutsche Welle. On Wednesday, the French health authorities reported 10,050 new cases of coronavirus infection, which for the first time since September 14 exceeded 10,000, according to Reuters.
The daily number of deaths caused by coronavirus remains well below previous peaks of the vaccine pandemic, but there are concerns in Europe about lagging vaccination levels and lowering any restrictions on Covid-19.
The pandemic is not over
Leading German health officials warned on Wednesday that the country was entering the fourth wave of a pandemic and called for more people to be vaccinated against Covid-19, which has been shown to reduce the severity of infection, hospitalization and mortality.
Speaking at a joint news conference, German Health Minister Jens Spahn and the head of the Robert Koch Institute for Infectious Diseases, Lothar Wheeler, said slowing the number of vaccinated people was a problem, as was the number of unvaccinated people.
“The pandemic is not over,” Span said, adding that it is now primarily a “pandemic of the unvaccinated – and it is massive,” Deutsche Welle reported.
“If we do not act, this fourth wave will bring a lot of suffering again. Many people will become seriously ill and die, and medical services will again be under extreme pressure,” Wheeler said.
The number of COVID-19 cases in the UK has risen sharply over the past few months, with the number of new cases ranging from 40,000 to 50,000 a day, although the figures for recent days show an indicative decline. 41,299 new cases were registered on Wednesday.
The UK government is very reluctant to reintroduce restrictions against Covid-19 in the face of rising cases, as it has previously told the public that people need to “get used to living with the virus”.
