From containing the pandemic to being engulfed by the second wave: what happened in central Europe?

A worker disinfects the statue of Czechoslovakian President Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk in the square with the same name in the city of Prague (Czech Republic) on March 27, 2020.MARTIN DIVISEK / EFE

“We have been victims of our own success.

We managed the first wave of the coronavirus so well that we believed we were invincible ”.

The sociologist Dana Hamplova summarizes what has happened in the Czech Republic, which has gone from being a model of containment and management of the pandemic to now being among the countries in the world with the highest daily infection rates.

On Friday morning, the Czechs broke a new daily record: 8,618 new infected, their highest count in a single day since the health crisis broke out in spring, in a country of just 10 million inhabitants.

But are not the only ones.

Since the beginning of September, the vertiginous increase in infections has spread like a black cloud across central and eastern Europe.

Day after day the cases multiply.

The restrictions return.

From Prague to Budapest, Warsaw, Bratislava or Bucharest, doctors are warning that beds, respirators, and staff are beginning to be in short supply.

“In Poland the number of hospitalized has doubled in the last 10 days.

We started to get exhausted, ”says Wojciech Szczeklik, Head of Intensive Care at the Krakow Military Hospital.

Poland registered 4,280 new infections and 76 deaths on Thursday, the highest number of deaths from COVID-19 in the country in just 24 hours.

In Hungary the closing of borders decreed by the Government of Viktor Orbán on September 1 has been worth little.

There the number of infected has increased in the last month approximately 276%.

But how is it possible that the very countries that so effectively and strictly contained the spread of the pandemic in the spring are now suffering the scourge of this second wave?

“We have had the feeling of false danger because we have not lived what the Spanish or the Italians did.

Many citizens criticized the government for having declared a state of alarm in March when there were hardly any cases in the Czech Republic.

The economy suffered, it was like a bad dream, ”Hamplova of the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences explains by phone.

“Then summer came, the measurements were relaxed and it seemed that nothing had happened.

Now we have just had regional elections in the country and the pandemic entered the campaign.

If you were wearing a mask it is because you defend the government, and if not, it is because you vote against it. "

Politicization of the pandemic

The situation is quite similar in neighboring Poland.

Overconfidence for having managed to curb the number of infected during the first wave has relaxed a very divided society in which the coronavirus has also become a political instrument.

And even religious.

“The messages from our leaders have been contradictory: at first they took very restrictive measures, they closed the borders.

It was not even Holy Week, "says Grzegorz Brozek, a professor in the Epidemiology department at the Silesian Medical University, by videoconference.

"But they continually appeared in their public appearances without a mask, they called for presidential elections in July despite the risk of contagion, they encouraged us to return to the streets without having any prevention plan," adds Brozek. "On the other hand, part of the The Church went into a rage when it was forbidden to give communion directly into the mouth of the faithful and it was proposed to deliver the host in the hands as a less contagious measure ", he adds." An absurd debate, but we already know the influence that priests have in this country".

Adding to the polarization of the virus is the economic damage caused by the stoppage of activity during confinement in these countries.

In Poland (with 38 million inhabitants) the specter of a recession hovers that the country has not suffered since the fall of the communist regime.

The European Commission estimates a slight GDP contraction of 4.3% in the sixth largest economy in the EU.

“The economic and political factor has prevailed over the scientific discourse.

In the public debate it is not said that our health system is not prepared for a wave as strong as the one that Spain is experiencing ”, says Brozek by videoconference.

Fragile health systems

This feeling of loneliness and lack of interest in the situation of medical and scientific personnel is also shared by Peter Álmos, vice president of the Hungarian Medical Chamber.

“During the first wave, we had time to react because the government understood the situation and the appropriate measures were taken.

Not now ”, says this doctor in Clinical Medicine from the University of Szeged from Budapest.

Álmos points to the lack of personnel as one of the greatest weaknesses of the Hungarian health system.

There are currently about 19,300 public physicians in the country (with almost 10 million inhabitants).

"In 2018 alone, 900 colleagues emigrated in search of better working conditions," he says.

To stop this leak in the middle of the pandemic, Orbán has just approved a law that increases his salary.

Although Álmos points out that the trap of this rule is in the fine print: “In exchange, the Government forces us to give up the fixed position.

They can change our destination to move to where there is not enough staff, "he says by phone from Budapest." What we need now are more intensive care doctors, more specialized intensive care nurses. We have to prepare for the cold winter. "

When your parents are infected in Romania and you live thousands of kilometers away

Since mid-July, infections in Romania have been on the rise.

The number of infected this week has exceeded 3,100 in a single day.

Since the pandemic broke out, this country has had 148,846 cases and almost 5,300 deaths.

Bucharest's restaurants, cafes, cinemas and theaters are closing again as in spring.

Then, and as in the Central European countries, the Romanian government took very restrictive measures to stop the first wave.

Now, everything is on the rise: María Rus, 38, lives in Madrid, but has her parents, septuagenarians, in Romania, specifically in Salva, a very small town in the north of the country.

Both have been infected with coronavirus.

And she has had to suffer the serious convalescence of her parents from a distance.

"I thought I was going to lose them, my father was in a coma for several days, my mother was admitted to the hospital as well. Both isolated. My mother told me on the phone: 'Daughter, they treat us like dogs, astronauts [referring to doctors who treated them] they come and leave us food, they hardly come close. 'And I couldn't do anything. Above all, I don't trust Romanian health at all, "he says.

"You can't even imagine how bad public hospitals are," he adds.

Eventually her parents recovered and returned to town.

"Nobody approached them. They were stigmatized."

Now they live locked up for fear of contagion and with part of their children more than 3,000 kilometers away.

Information about the coronavirus

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- Search engine: The new normal by municipalities

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