Europe Battles to Contain Virus Second Wave as Global Cases Top 30 million

MADRID, September 19 (Online Int’l): A host of European countries imposed new local restrictions on Friday to reduce spiralling new cases of coronavirus as they seek to avoid the example of Israel which enforced a second nationwide shutdown.

City authorities in Madrid announced a partial lockdown on nearly a million people, the British government unveiled new measures limiting social contact in several regions, while Ireland banned indoor dining at restaurants and pubs in Dublin.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said there was “no question” that his country was “now seeing a second wave coming in” as he toured the site of a new vaccine centre.

“We are seeing it in France, in Spain, across Europe — it has been absolutely, I m afraid, inevitable we were going to see it in this country”, he added.

In France, where new daily cases hit a fresh record of 13,000 on Friday, the government is struggling to create enough testing capacity as new hotspots emerge daily. The city of Nice on the Riviera banned groups of more than 10 people meeting on its beach, in parks or public gardens.

Worldwide the respiratory disease has killed nearly 947,000 people since the outbreak emerged in China last December, according to a tally from official sources compiled by media, while more than 30.2 million cases have been registered.

“We’re adding about 1.8 to two million cases per week to the global case count, and an average somewhere between 40,000 to 50,000 deaths”, WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan told a virtual news conference.

“Thankfully that is not rising exponentially. This is a hugely high figure to be settling at. That is not where we want to be.”

In Madrid, one of the worst affected areas in Europe during the first wave of Covid-19 in March and April, medics warned that hospitals were getting close to capacity again.

“Intensive care units are overwhelmed with Covid patients”, Santiago Usoz, an accident and emergency medic at the October 12 hospital, told media.

A partial lockdown was announced for residents of several areas in densely populated, low-income neighbourhoods in the south of the capital which will come into force on Monday. People will only be allowed to leave their zone to go to work, seek medical care or take their children to school, while bars and restaurants will have to reduce their capacity by 50 percent, the regional government of Madrid said.

Rules preventing people from socialising with anyone from outside their household were imposed in northeast England on Friday, putting more than two million people under new restrictions.

These will be extended to other parts of northwest, northern and central England from Tuesday.

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