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Covid-19: Spain, United Kingdom ... why the situation is improving among our neighbors

2021-04-06T04:13:52.291Z


Massive vaccination, strict confinement, localized measures ... The methods are not the same and yet, the result is there: in Royau


Portugal is reopening its museums and café terraces.

The British are already preparing for their summer vacation abroad.

In Madrid, the Spaniards were not lacking in restaurants, since they went through the winter without closing.

While France has no other choice but to live a second spring in confinement and the daily figures are close to 40,000 new cases detected, our neighbors are already seeing happy days.

They have come back from afar, but the number of contaminations has plummeted since January.

Overview of their very different strategies.

In Portugal, strict confinement in January

After the Christmas holidays, Portugal paid heavily for its release.

A third epidemic wave linked to the English variant, a priori landed from British tourists who came to the country, swept at the beginning of the year, with a peak at nearly 12,900 cases on January 28.

While we spoke of "Portuguese miracle" last spring, the country declared a state of emergency.

The hospital system in the Lisbon region, saturated, was no longer able to absorb the number of patients.

The government immediately reacted: from January 15, and for two months, the country was hard to reconfigure.

Schools closed a week later, telecommuting became the rule, and deviating from it was considered a serious offense.

These measures have borne fruit: the contaminations curve has not stopped falling since January 30, reaching only 418 cases on April 4.

All indicators are green and the virus is circulating less than in the rest of Europe.

Portugal began on March 15 a deconfinement by stages, very slow, to avoid a resumption of contaminations: nurseries and schools first, non-food shops then, and since Monday, museums, monuments and even some terraces are back.

VIDEO.

"It's the first day of freedom": Portugal reopens its museums and café terraces

From April 19, it will be the turn of universities and high schools, cinemas, theaters, performance halls, restaurants and cafes (subject to time constraints).

Outdoor events, such as weddings, will be permitted with limited capacity.

From May 3, most hourly or numerical limitations (restaurant gauge, for example) will be relaxed.

This success "can be attributed mainly to its strict confinement, with schools closed between January and March", comments Antoine Flahault, director of the Institute for Global Health at the University of Geneva (Switzerland).

In England, massive vaccination and total "lockdown"

Same spectacular trajectory in the United Kingdom, whose effective vaccination campaign has largely contributed to the end of the crisis.

Around Christmas, the contaminations curve exceeded 35,000 cases per day, reaching the worrying bar of 60,000 cases on January 10.

To "control" again the new British variant, much more contagious than the "classic" virus, the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, took the painful decision "to enter into a fairly strong national confinement".

Painful, because "England reintroduced confinement that went against the policy it had pursued from the start," recalls Benjamin Davido, infectious disease specialist at Garches hospital.

On January 6, the English therefore submit to strict restrictions, with the closure of schools for a month.

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Overwhelmed at that time, British hospitals saw the number of coronavirus patients drop over the weeks of the "lockdown" and dramatic increases in the number of people bitten.

On this last point, the United Kingdom has darkened: in early December, it was the first country in the world to authorize the Pfizer vaccine.

France began its vaccination campaign a month later, a delay that our country has never caught up with.

The British machine has turned out to be formidable.

On February 3, the United Kingdom passed the milestone of ten million vaccinated.

Two months later, 46% of the population received at least one dose.

So much so that in three months the country went from 60,000 to 4,000 cases per day.

These figures pave the way for a major step in deconfinement from mid-April, with the reopening of non-essential shops and restaurant terraces.

Comparative infographic of vaccination in France and the United Kingdom Infographic

Boris Johnson even allows himself to talk about holidays: if travel abroad remains prohibited at least until May 17, the Prime Minister plans for this summer to introduce a health passport, with a traffic light system to classify countries, depending on the stage of their vaccination, their contamination rate or the presence of worrying variants.

In Spain, very localized isolation

With more than 75,000 deaths linked to Covid-19, Spain is one of the most bereaved countries in Europe.

If its strategy is much less readable, since each province acts independently, it is clear that since the beginning of the year, the government has resisted a new general confinement.

And, paradoxically, the cases are plummeting: after a peak of 37,000 post-holiday contaminations on January 26, this number has only decreased to stagnate around 4,000 at the end of March, then to rise to around 6,000 at the beginning of April. .

It has been 1 year since they disappeared ... a few human statues from the Rambla in Barcelona are back.

But we are still far from the tourist influx before Covid.

pic.twitter.com/30gtoThgxJ

- Elise Gazengel (@EliseGaz) March 21, 2021

Since October 25, however, the Spaniards have not been allowed to move from one region to another.

And often, as in the Basque Country, Catalonia or Andalusia, the inhabitants cannot leave their city or their community of municipalities.

"Spain has done the opposite of France from the end of the summer: it has bet everything on mobility restrictions and partially reopened restaurants and culture", summarizes Henry de Laguérie, French journalist installed in Spain.

A beneficial measure, despite the influx of tourists, estimates Benjamin Davido: “From the moment they had confinements by perimeter, they slowed down the entries.

When we say in France that you have to live outside, that's a lesson learned in a year, especially with the success of terraces in Spain.

Another element that may have played a part, a spring climate effect in Spain "expected in France" hopes the infectious disease specialist, with the return of sunny days.

Source: leparis

All life articles on 2021-04-06

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