Mass tests and restrictions that will last months, European governments’ plans to counter Covid-19 are leaked. Modeled on what happened in Slovakia, Austria is planning an extended screening at the end of the second lockdown, which will go into effect next week. The announcement came from Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who spoke of the intention to take “a similar step” to what happened in Slovakia, where two thirds of the population were tested two weeks ago, with just over 1% positive results . From Tuesday, the country will return its hands to March with a total lockdown: 24-hour curfew, schools and shops closed, in an attempt to keep under control a contagion curve described as exponential in various regions. The block will remain in effect until 6 December. Then the carpet tests should arrive, “in order to guarantee the reopening of schools and the Christmas holidays,” explained Kurz. And if for now Vienna is the only one to have surrendered to the most drastic option – a hard lockdown on the model of the spring one – other European governments do not hide that the restrictions to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic could go on for a long time. .
“Four or five months of severe measures in Germany”
The Germans should prepare for another “four or five months of tough measures” to stop the increase in infections and should not expect the current rules to be relaxed quickly, he warned from the columns of the Picture on sunday the Minister of Economy of Berlin, Peter Altmaier. Words that come on the eve of a government meeting to assess the progress of the restrictions launched earlier this month for a whole range of activities, from catering to leisure, sports and culture. Also in France in recent days, Prime Minister Jean Castex warned that the country would have to “live with the virus for a long time” and that the Paris government is working on “rules” to keep the situation safe until the arrival of a vaccine.
Schools closed in Greece, 80% of Portuguese under curfew
And elsewhere, in the Old Continent, the idea of easing restrictions is also ruled out. Indeed, new ones are introduced. In Portugal, 80% of the population will be subject to a curfew next week. Greece has also decided to close its primary schools and kindergartens. Romania, the Balkan country most affected by the epidemic and which has been traveling around 10,000 daily infections for days, also had to deal with a tragedy within a tragedy on Saturday evening: a fire broke out in an intensive care unit of a hospital of the city of Piatra Neamt, in the north-east of the country, and killed ten patients with Covid-19.
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