Europe braces for tougher COVID-19 rules
Police officers talk to a man on a railway platform while checking if people are wearing masks as the spread of the coronavirus continues in Berlin, Germany on Monday.
Several European countries are tightening COVID-19 restrictions this week, starting with a partial shutdown on Monday in Germany, as authorities across the continent scramble to slow a rapid rise in coronavirus infections that threatens to overwhelm their health care systems.
Britain and Austria will follow suit later in the week, closing restaurants, bars and nonessential shops. Italy and Greece also announced new measures. In some places, the new rules are prompting violent protests by people frustrated at once again having to forgo freedoms.
But in many, experts are saying they should have come weeks ago — a reflection of the increasingly difficult balance many countries are struggling to strike between controlling the virus and boosting already damaged economies.
“We are aware of the frustration, the sense of loss, the tiredness of citizens, also of the anger which is being manifested in these days, by citizens who find themselves living with new limits to their personal freedom,” said Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte, as he defended his government’s decision to order new measures.
Restrictions have been slowly ramping up for weeks in many European countries, but virus cases have continued to rise. There was a sign of hope from hard-hit Belgium, however, where a leading virologist said that “the high-speed train is somewhat easing up.”
Overall, Europe has seen more than 250,000 confirmed virus-related deaths, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.
Experts say case and death figures understate the true toll of the pandemic due to missed cases, limited testing and other reasons.
In Germany, restaurants, bars, theaters, cinemas, gyms and other leisure facilities closed in a four-week “wave-breaker” shutdown that seeks to force daily new infections back down to manageable levels. Germans have been asked not to travel, and hotels are barred from accommodating tourists.
In a worrisome sign for a country long praised for its testing and tracing abilities, German officials say they can’t track the source of three-quarters of new coronavirus cases. Health Minister Jens Spahn, who himself caught the virus, says he doesn’t know where he was infected.
Spahn tweeted on Monday that the number of COVID-19 patients in intensive care has tripled in Germany over the past two weeks, and “we must break this momentum, together and with determination.”
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief of staff Helge Braun said the aim is to end the restrictions “in this strictness” at the end of November.
“This is also about enabling Christmas business for German companies, and Christmas celebrations with the family for all of us,” Braun told RBB Inforadio.
“The stricter the measures, the quicker they work, so we decided on relatively strict measures.”
The new restrictions are still milder than the ones Germany imposed in the first phase of the coronavirus pandemic in March and April. This time, schools, nonessential shops and hairdressers are staying open. Officials will review the situation after two weeks.
