Queue of people waiting to undergo a coronavirus test at the San Giovanni hospital in Rome, last Thursday.Gregorio Borgia / AP
Spain was the exception during the month of August.
The infections grew little by little, but steadily, while the rest of Europe looked with concern at its southern neighbor.
In fact, the incidence began to rebound at the end of July, when the cases were already multiplying by two or three those of France or Germany.
But there weren't too many yet;
the situation seemed manageable.
At the end of August Spain had already been left alone.
With the curve soaring, the country was clearly in a second wave, different from the first, but also worrisome.
It has been a matter of time before the rest of Europe succumbed to this second onslaught of the coronavirus.
France, the UK, Germany and the Czech Republic are posting record numbers.
Italy prepares new restrictive measures by exceeding 5,000 daily infections for the first time.
The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC for its acronym in English) warned this Friday that practically in all the countries it monitors (those of the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom) the reported cases rise with respect to the last week.
That is, the trend is upward.
The European body is also concerned about another of the indicators it monitors, that of cases registered in people over 65 years of age.
Also in this age group, the trend of infections is upward in 19 of the 34 countries analyzed, including Spain.
With the latest data available, the Czech Republic is the country with the highest cumulative incidence at 14 days: 451 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.
They are followed by the Netherlands, with 323;
Belgium, with 309, and Spain, with 308. The incidence of the disease, warns the ECDC, has been growing for 77 days in a row in Europe.
"In Spain the incidence picked up much earlier than we all believed," says Jeffrey V. Lazarus, epidemiologist and researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal).
"We knew that the virus was going to become strong again as soon as the cold arrived and the population returned to get into the houses and the children into the schools," he says, but in Spain it still happened in the middle of summer.
"The summer break was not used well to prepare," he laments. He refers to making coronavirus tests more accessible, to strengthening primary care and contact tracing, but he believes that there is a particularity why the second wave is advanced so much in Spain: "In part I think it could be due to the draconian confinement. When people were finally able to leave, families and friends got together to eat, San Juan was celebrated in June in various places ... They were very happy because the Authorities said that there had been no alarm or phases and everything was as before. But there was still coronavirus. This has not happened in other countries, that need to finally see the family after months of not being able to change province. "
The slow growth of infections in Germany has seen an abrupt acceleration this week, sparking concern among the country's health and political authorities.
On Friday, the 4,000 infections were exceeded for the third consecutive day, with a total of 4,721, according to the Robert Koch Institute.
The increase is largely recorded in large cities such as Berlin, officially converted into a risk area since Thursday for having exceeded 50 infections in seven days per 100,000 inhabitants (58.2).
Translated to the indicator that is usually used in Spain, its cumulative incidence at 14 days is around 100 cases.
The Community of Madrid has five times that incidence, with 541 cases, but it has areas that far exceed 1,000.
Germany has decided to take action before the situation gets out of hand.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel met this Friday with the mayors of 11 large German cities to agree on the application of new restrictions when a city exceeds the threshold of 50 weekly cases per 100,000 inhabitants.
Restricting the sale of alcohol, extending the use of the mask in places where the safety distance cannot be maintained or reducing the number of participants in social gatherings are part of the catalog of restrictions, aimed at curbing infections and avoiding paralysis. of the economy.
Merkel also insisted after the virtual meeting with the mayors that schools should remain open whenever possible.
The German capital has already got to work: it has decreed from this Saturday the night curfew, which implies the closing of bars and restaurants from eleven at night to six in the morning to try to put an end to leisure nocturnal, one of the causes of the spread of the virus.
Meetings during the night are also restricted to a maximum of five people.
In the private sphere, the maximum number is reduced to 10 people.
The overnight stay in other
Länder
of people coming from risk areas is subject in several States to the presentation of a negative covid-19 test.
Italy tries to react in the last hours to the increase in size of the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
Until last week, the country had resisted better than any of its neighbors despite having been the hardest hit in March and April.
But the latest data, which exceeds 5,000 cases for the first time (on Saturday they reached 5,400) since those dates, have triggered all the alarms and the Government is considering upward correcting the restrictions included in the decree that it will approve this week.
Unlike what happened in the spring, when the pandemic hit the north of the country, now it is the central and southern regions that are the most affected, such as Lazio, Campania and Calabria.
That is why this week the Government has extended the state of alarm until January 31 and has decreed that the regions will not be able to establish more lax restrictions than those imposed by the Executive.
The use of the mask on the street and in all public spaces is also mandatory.
In the United Kingdom, the National Statistics Office (ONS) gave the warning signal on Friday: the coronavirus already causes an average of more than 17,000 infected a day in England alone.
Across the country, it is close to 22,000 daily cases.
The highest incidence levels are occurring in the North East and North West of England.
Cities like Liverpool, Manchester or Middlesborough have already warned that the capacity of their hospitals can be exceeded in a matter of days.
"I don't want to panic, but within ten days our hospitals will be at a similar level to what they experienced during the peak of the pandemic," said Matt Ashston, Liverpool's director of public health.
Boris Johnson's government is preparing to announce on Monday more severe local restrictions in those areas, where more than 10 million citizens will once again suffer the rigors of confinement.
It won't go to the extreme at the end of March, as Downing Street is desperately fighting to avoid the closure of schools and businesses, but personal mobility and leisure will suffer.
Johnson faces the second wave with his political credibility greatly reduced, and questioned by the lack of coordination with the most affected local authorities, but the scientific community urges him not to fall into the same mistake of the spring.
“We are faced with the need to make the same decisions as at the beginning of March.
The longer we take to adopt them, the harsher and more draconian the interventions needed to change the trajectory of this pandemic will be, ”said Jeremy Farrar, a member of SAGE, the committee of scientists and experts that advises from the first minute from the crisis to Downing Street.
France has twice broken the absolute record for new cases in 24 hours this week: more than 18,000 on both Wednesday and Thursday and 20,339 this Friday.
The positivity rate at the national level is also "high", 10.4% according to Health.
More than 1,400 patients are in intensive care in a country where the initial resuscitation capacity before the pandemic was 5,000 beds.
The president of the scientific council instituted by the French Government, Jean-François Delfraissy, warned this Friday that the coronavirus health crisis will last until next summer and that we must prepare for “six very difficult months”.
With information from
Ana Carbajosa
(Berlin),
Daniel Verdú
(Rome),
Silvia Ayuso
(Paris) and
Rafa de Miguel
(London).
Information about the coronavirus
- Here you can follow the last hour on the evolution of the pandemic
- This is how the coronavirus curve evolves in Spain and in each autonomy
- Download the tracking application for Spain
- Search engine: The new normal by municipalities
- Guide to action against the disease