“Prevent the dromedary from getting a second bump,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told his people this week. “Don’t let the second wave grow bigger.”
But the question is whether that is still possible. In various parts of the country, the number of corona infections is increasing so quickly that people are forbidden to associate with people from outside their own household any longer. Cafés close earlier. To give weight to his words, Health and Social Affairs Minister Matt Hancock even added the worst specter for the British: no Christmas. “If we are not strict now, the Christmas holidays will be in danger.”
The United Kingdom is one of the countries where the virus is raging at alarming speed. It again affects vulnerable groups, such as the elderly. In a week, the number of corona patients in the ICUs, where 107 people now lie.
“Last week’s figures are a wake-up call for Europe,” said Hans Kluge yesterday, the president of the European arm of the World Health Organization. Kluge warned that European corona figures are rising faster and faster and that more and more elderly people are becoming infected. Because they die more often than young people from the effects of the virus, Kluge expects European mortality rates to be higher again next month. “A very serious problem is unfolding before our eyes.”
Spain in particular is a source of concern
Kluge is particularly concerned about the situation in a number of specific European countries. Spain in particular is a source of concern. There, 239 people died in 24 hours on Thursday due to Covid-19. That’s the highest number since the lockdown ended in May. Now there is again talk of a lockdown in Spain, which must apply in the capital Madrid. The fact that the number of infections is rapidly spreading can also be seen in the mortality figures. One third of last week’s Spanish deaths were recorded in Madrid.
Large parts of neighboring France are also facing an enormously rapid increase in the number of corona patients. It is not yet Spain, but in France 46 people died from the virus on Thursday. A hundred people were also admitted to the IC.
More and more sources of infection in French care homes
The latter figure is reminiscent of the first wave, when many were also placed on a ventilator every day. Of the 827 contamination clusters identified, 77 were discovered on Thursday. It is also worrying that the authorities cite increasing numbers of infections in care homes: on Thursday there were 127 institutions for the elderly where several residents were infected.
In Aveyron, for example, is the nursing home La gloriande de Severac, where eight people died from the effects of the virus in the past week. There could be even more, because seventy residents, most of them over eighty, are infected.
In addition to Paris, the number of infections in southern Marseille is particularly high. The hospitals there started to recruit new staff urgently last week. Two-thirds of the city’s IC beds are occupied by a patient with Covid-19. Across the country, more than a thousand people are on life support, most of them in Paris.
The number of corona cases has also accelerated in Belgium. About 40 people are now hospitalized there every day. The nurses are now as busy caring for corona patients as in mid-June, when the first peak was on the decline.
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The virus is spreading more and more uncontrollably around the world
The number of corona infections worldwide continues to rise. This also increases the chance that the virus will return in countries where it now appears to be contained.
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