France, where the number of new daily infections has now more than doubled since the beginning of October (from 4,000 to more than 8,000), has announced that, in view of the new cases, face masks will be required again in primary schools and restrictions will be tightened.
As of December 15, people over 65 must receive a booster dose to continue to keep the health passport that allows them to enter restaurants, museums and long-distance trains.
In contrast, countries that have managed to vaccinate a large percentage of the population relaxed restrictions. Portugal, which has vaccinated almost 90 percent of its population, on October 1 stopped requiring a health passport and lifted almost all restrictions related to the coronavirus. In Spain, a country that has reached a vaccination rate of 80 percent, no health passport is required.
However, it seems that, in large part, the trend is to tighten measures as winter approaches and the virus spreads.
In the Basque region, in northern Spain, restrictions on meetings in cities with high contagion rates were announced. And the Austrian chancellor made it clear that the only way out of the pandemic and closures in Europe was vaccination.
“My goal is clearly to get the unvaccinated to get vaccinated, and not to block the vaccinated,” Schallenberg told Austria’s Ö1 radio, The Associated Press reported. “In the long term, the way out of this vicious cycle that we find ourselves in – and it is a vicious cycle, we are going from one wave to another, and that cannot continue. to infinity– it’s just the vaccination ”.
Christopher F. Schuetze in Dortmund, Germany; Stephen Castle and Isabella Kwai in London; Aurelien Breeden in Paris; and Emma Bubola and Elisabetta Povoledo in Rome.
Jason Horowitz is the bureau chief in Rome; covers Italy, Greece and other southern European sites. He covered the 2016 US presidential campaign, the Obama administration, and Congress with an emphasis on political and special profiles. @jasondhorowitz
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