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Europe failed to stop the third wave of covid: is the US still now?

2021-03-20T01:58:29.794Z


Europe did not stop the third wave of covid-19 and imposed new blockades across the continent. Health authorities are concerned that the US will continue.


Reactions in Italy to new restrictions 1:47

(CNN) -

Europe missed its chance to stop the third wave of the coronavirus epidemic before it spiraled out of control.

Now it must pay a high price, with the imposition of new closures across the continent.

On Thursday night, France announced new restrictions in 16 regions, including Paris and Nice.

However, President Emmanuel Macron has refused to reimpose a national lockdown as cases increase.

On Monday, much of Italy, including the cities of Rome and Milan, went back into strict lockdown.

While all regions of Spain, except Madrid, decided to restrict travel during the upcoming Holy Week festivities.

Berlin, the capital of Germany, also halted the plan to make its closure more flexible, on the grounds of a growing number of COVID-19 cases.

Critics point out that the new restrictions come too late.

Also, that Europe's current problems can be traced back to politicians too eager to start lifting restrictions.

  • READ: No evidence that AstraZeneca vaccine causes blood clots, says WHO vaccine safety commission

«The second wave did not end.

The lockdown was interrupted too soon, to allow people to go shopping for Christmas, "French epidemiologist Catherine Hill told CNN.

And he added that infection levels remained at a high level.

"Recently, admission to intensive care units has [increased] steadily, and the situation is now critical in various parts of the country, including greater Paris," he noted.

The contagious UK variant

A more contagious variant of the virus, known as B.1.1.7, appears to be responsible for the chaos.

Preliminary new data published in the

British Medical Journal

suggests that the variant, first detected last year in the UK, may also be more deadly.

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Alessandro Grimaldi, director of infectious diseases at Hospital Salvatore in the Italian city of L'Aquila, told CNN that the new, more contagious variant had "changed the dynamics."

In that sense, he added that "inevitably, the measures taken to prevent infection must be more drastic."

WHO Warning

The World Health Organization warned of this almost two months ago, when it became clear that the UK variant circulated in most of Europe.

“Once it becomes dominant, it can affect the overall epidemic curve and lead to the need for a more restrictive approach to public health and social measures that need to be implemented.

So that transmission rates can decrease, 'said Catherine Smallwood, the World Health Organization's chief emergency officer for Europe at the time.

That is what happened.

Germany's disease control center announced on March 10 that the UK variant had become the dominant one in the country.

The new variant is also responsible for the majority of new cases in France and Italy, according to health officials in those countries.

In Spain, B.1.1.7 is now the dominant strain in nine of the 19 regions of the country.

Will the United States follow after Europe?

The increasingly dire situation facing Europe is a warning to the United States.

The strain that is causing a new crisis across the continent is also spreading rapidly in the U.S. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) project that it will become the dominant strain. in the country in late March or early April.

But there is another reason why American experts are concerned about what is going on in Europe right now.

Germany, France, Italy and Spain avoided the huge spikes in infections that paralyzed the UK after the Christmas holidays.

His infection levels were stable or showed signs of declining just a few weeks ago.

As the administration of vaccines began, albeit slow, across the continent people began to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

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    And lowering restrictions doesn't help

But although the trends looked promising, the number of cases was still very high.

And that ended in a major problem when the new wave started, which made the new closures necessary, Grimaldi said.

The need for closures

"It is not easy to impose closures, due to the economic desperation that it brings ... the change in lifestyle that it brings," he added.

"But they are essential to try to stop the virus."

He added that data from a recent study by the University of Bologna showed that stricter containment measures, called "the red zones" in Italy, do work.

Which has led to a drop of up to 91% in the number of deaths related to covid-19.

A delay in the decision to impose locks can be deadly.

The Resolution Foundation, a British think tank, reported Thursday that an additional 27,000 people died from COVID-19 as the government delayed the start of the country's latest blockade until January, despite evidence of a rapid increase in cases in December.

A man walks near a closed bar in Turin's Piazza Vittorio, on March 17, 2021.

US public health officials are concerned that the country is heading in the same direction.

Precisely while some states began to relax public security measures, even when the number of cases is still high.

“When you have a plateau at a level as high as 60,000 cases per day, it is a very vulnerable time to have a surge, for (the cases) to go back up.

That's exactly what happened in Europe, "Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN.

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He also pointed out that after promising declines in COVID-19 numbers, some European countries "withdrew public health measures."

Which led to new peaks, he said.

The role of vaccination in Europe

Mike Tildesley, an expert in infectious disease modeling at the University of Warwick and a scientific advisor to the UK government, noted that slow roll-out of vaccines in many European countries means they face a higher risk of seeing large waves of new cases. .

"Unfortunately, until nations move closer to herd immunity, we are likely to see waves of infections as countries move from phase to phase of shutdowns," he said.

Grimaldi said that while vaccination plays an important role in fighting the epidemic, it has to go hand in hand with public safety measures.

Precisely, he pointed out, because the more the virus circulates in the population, the greater the probability that it will continue to mutate.

"The virus will try to survive despite the vaccine, so the closures are really the only way to stop the circulation of the virus," he insisted.

The World Health Organization warned on Thursday that Europe's vaccination campaigns are not yet stopping the transmission of the new coronavirus.

The continent recorded more than 1.2 million new infections last week.

And more than 20,000 people die from covid-19 every week.

'The number of people dying from covid-19 in Europe is higher now than at this time last year.

This reflects the widespread dominance of this virus, 'said Dr Hans Kluge, WHO Regional Director for Europe.

And the pandemic is "moving east," Kluge added, as infection and death rates in central Europe, the Balkans and the Baltic states are among the highest in the world.

A new model published Thursday in

The Lancet

showed that vaccines alone may not be enough to contain the epidemic, emphasizing the need for a gradual easing of restrictions rather than a swift reopening.

The importance of covid-19 testing

Hill, the French epidemiologist, added that screening should also remain a key part of the strategy.

"To control the epidemic, it is necessary to do massive tests to the population to find and isolate the carriers of the virus," he said.

In addition, he noted that an estimated 50% of infections are caused by people who do not know they have covid-19.

The new wave of high case numbers is not limited to Europe.

The number of cases increased 10% globally over the past week to more than 3 million new infections reported, according to the latest WHO situation report.

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New cases peaked in early January.

But then they decreased for four weeks in a row before increasing for the last three weeks.

The number of people dying continues to decline, dropping to less than 60,000 a week in the previous week.

It is the first time this has happened since the beginning of November.

CNN's Eliza Mackintosh contributed to this report.

Covid-19 Vaccines

Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2021-03-20

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