Europe has missed the opportunity to stop a third wave of infection and is re-enacting the blockade, leaving the United States worried that they will suffer the same fate.
On the evening of 18 March, France announced a new blockade on 16 territories, including the capitals Paris and Nice, although President Emanuel Macron refused to re-enact a nationwide blockade.
Earlier last week, several regions of Italy, including the cities of Rome and Milan, were again strictly blocked, while in Spain it was decided to limit travel during Easter to all areas except Madrid. The German capital, Berlin, has also called off plans to ease restrictions due to a sharp increase in the Kovid-19 case.
Medical staff transferring patients to Angers, France on 15 March. Image: AFP.
French epidemiologist Catherine Hill said, “The second wave did not end because they opened the door too early for people to do Christmas shopping.” “Recently there has been a steady increase in the number of active hospitalization cases, and the situation is becoming more serious in some parts of the country, including the Paris metropolitan area.”
The more infectious B.1.1.7 version from the UK seems to be the culprit behind the third wave. New preliminary data published in the British Medical Journal suggests that stress is even more deadly.
Alessandro Grimaldi, director of infectious diseases at the Salvatore Hospital in the Italian city of L’Aquila, says the new and more contagious version has “changed the game”, adding that “drastic measures to prevent infection. Infection is inevitable”.
The WHO warned about this about two months ago, when it became clear that the British version was widespread in most of Europe. “Once it becomes the most common version, it can hit the epidemic curve and put us on a more rigorous outlook,” said emergency response officer Catherine Smallwood in Europe.
Which has now happened. The German Center for Disease Control and Prevention announced on 10 March that the British version had become a major strain in Germany. Health officials said diversity is responsible for most of the new infections in France and Italy. In Spain, B.1.1.7 is currently the most common strain in 9 of the country’s 19 regions.
The situation in Europe is becoming a lesson of caution for America. The new version is also spreading rapidly in the US. The CDC predicts that it will become the most popular strain in the US at the end of this month or early April.
But there is another reason why American experts are worried about what is happening in Europe. Germany, France, Italy and Spain have spared the case spike that paralyzed Britain after the Christmas holidays. Their infection rates stabilized or showed signs of receding a few weeks earlier. As soon as the vaccination program took off across the continent, people began to see light at the end of the tunnel, although vaccination efforts were ongoing.
But while this trend looks promising, the number of new infections is still very high. The big thing happened as soon as the new wave began, forcing governments to blockade again, Grimali said.
“It is not easy to stop because of the economic and social consequences,” he said. “But it is an indispensable tool to stop the virus.”
He said that data from a recent University of Bologna study showed that strict measures of closure, known as the “Red Zone” in Italy, are highly effective, reducing deaths by 91%. With reference to Kovid-19.
Reapplying the blockade can be very dangerous. The Resolution Foundation, a British consulting group, said mid-week that 27,000 people died because the British government delayed the country’s most recent blockade until January, despite a sharp increase in infections in December 2020.
US public health officials worry that America is heading in a similar direction, As some states began loosening restrictions when the number of new infections is still high. Director of the Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Drs. Anthony Fauci said, “If the new infection persists in 60,000 cases per day, it is likely to increase again. The same happened in Europe.”
They found that after many European countries reported a shortage of promising, they removed public health measures and this led to a new increase.
Mike Tildesley, an infectious disease modeling specialist at War Tilwick University and a UK government scientific adviser, said that slow vaccine deployments in many European countries meant they were facing a new wave of infection. “Sadly, until the countries get closer to ‘public immunity, we will see waves of infection moving between the blockers.”
Although vaccination plays an important role in fighting the disease, it should go hand-in-hand with preventive measures, because the more the virus spreads to the community, the more likely it is to mutate, Grimaldi said. “The virus will try to survive despite the deployment of the vaccine, so the blockade is really the only way to stop the virus from spreading,” he said.
The WHO warned in midweek that the European vaccination campaign is yet to slow down the transmission of nCoV. The continent recorded more than 1.2 million new infections last week and more than 20,000 people died each week from Kovid-19.
WHO’s Regional Director for Europe, Drs. Hans Cluis said: “The number of deaths from Kovid-19 in Europe reflects the extent of the spread of the virus compared to the same period last year”.
The epidemic is “advancing east”, with infections and mortality in Central Europe, the Balkans and the Baltic states, the highest in the world, “advancing”.
A new model published in the Lancet suggests that vaccination alone may not be enough to prevent an epidemic, requiring stressful countries to gradually loosen the ban rather than to completely remove it immediately.
French epidemiologist Hill said that testing should also be an important part of the strategy. “To control the disease, we need large-scale testing to find and isolate people infected with the virus. It has been estimated that about 50% of infections are from people with no symptoms. Know that they have nCoV “. .
The new Kovid-19 wave is emerging not only in Europe. There has been a 10% increase in the number of new infections globally in the last one week. The new case was at its peak in early January, but then dropped to 4 weeks in a row before escalating over the past three weeks. For the first time since November 2020, the death rate dropped to 60,000 in one week last week.
Experts emphasize that the US is witnessing a tough race between Kovid-19 vaccination and variants, only that the easing of pandemic restrictions has made things more complicated.
Dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, Drs. Ashish Jha said, “It will be a tough race.” “The good news is that we are vaccinated very effectively. The bad news is that NCOV stress is spreading very quickly throughout the country.”
Phuong wu (Follow Cnn)