Suddenly, bad news from countries already "deconfined" have calmed any excess of optimism linked to deconfinement, which, in France, must begin this Monday, May 11. In South Korea, the second country in Asia most affected by the coronavirus before curbing the epidemic, the Seoul authorities decided on Sunday to close bars and nightclubs. In question, the fear of a second wave of Covid-19, after the appearance of more than twenty contaminations, apparently linked to the case of a young man who attended the weekend preceding five clubs in a neighborhood trendy from the South Korean capital.
Result, the health authorities, estimating at 7200 the number of people having visited these places, fear an outbreak of infections. They call on interested parties to come forward to “trace and test” suspected cases and their potential contacts, as was done on a large scale in February to stem the epidemic.
Homes in three German cantons
In Germany, just days after Chancellor Angela Merkel announced on Wednesday May 6 of a general relaxation of restrictions related to Covid-19, coronavirus outbreaks were detected in three cantons in the north, east and from the west of the country. These three cantons exceed the threshold for new contamination authorized under the deconfinement plan, and five others are approaching it. A tightening of measures, decided at local level by each Land (State-region) is envisaged.
In addition, the Robert Koch national institute (equivalent to the Pasteur institute) reported on Sunday an increase in the infection rate - the famous R0 measuring the propensity of a Covid-19 patient to contaminate other individuals -, passed in a few days from 0.7 to the danger zone from 1 to 1.1. The German chancellor had recently alerted her compatriots to the fact that with a rate above 1.1 the hospital capacity of the country would risk being overwhelmed.
Finally, this Sunday again, it was in Wuhan, the Chinese city from which the pandemic started at the end of 2019, that a new case was reported, a month after the end of the strictest confinement.
"Governments are reactive"
Should there be red flags for the rest of the world? The South Korean and German cases are all the more striking in that they are two model countries in their management of the coronavirus, comments Pascal Boniface, director of the Institute of International and Strategic Relations (Iris).
"The people trust their leaders, the South Korean president (Editor's note: Moon Jae-in) having just won the legislative elections on April 16 when it was contested before the Covid-19 crisis. It is therefore both worrying to see the pandemic rebound, and reassuring to note that governments are reactive, capable of reversing their plan of deconfinement. "
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In Germany, the slaughterhouses affected by the contaminations were closed and their employees placed under observation, as were the retirement homes where the new cases of Covid-19 broke out. Among other hardenings, Berlin could question the resumption in mid-May of the Bundesliga, the German football championship, while the Dynamo Dresden team in the second division has just been placed in quarantine.
Spain, which is preparing like France for deconfinement this Monday, has decided to make exceptions: Madrid and Barcelona, in particular, will remain subject to restrictions, their bars and restaurants remaining closed unlike those of the rest of the country. In the United Kingdom, the second most affected country in the world (31,500 dead), Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the beginning of deconfinement with counted steps, with the watchword "remain vigilant". As South Korean President Moon Jae-in says, "It won't be over until it's really over" ...