Once again, Europe is finding itself at the epicenter of Covid-19, and experts say the U.S. should see it as a warning.
Countries across the continent have seen cases spike, NBC News reported. Last month, there was a rise of more than 50 percent, and it has carried over into November as winter begins to bite.
Dr. Hans Kluge, the World Health Organization’s Europe region director, warned the region was “back at the epicenter of the pandemic,” and his words proved true.
On Friday, the World Health Organization reported nearly 2 million cases were confirmed across Europe from the week prior — the most reported cases the region has seen in a single week since the beginning of the pandemic.
Germany also reported more than 50,000 new cases, according to data from Johns Hopkins University and the Netherland, which reported over 16,000 cases — the country’s highest number since the pandemic started. The report prompted the government to enforce a partial lockdown on Saturday that will last at least three weeks.
As cases soared last month, Belgium also took action and reimposed some Covid restrictions, including a requirement that masks be worn in public places. The country recorded over 15,000 daily cases on Monday.
Although cases are soaring, the daily death rates among the three countries have remained relatively stable when compared to past spikes. Experts cited high vaccine uptakes for weakening the link between the number of cases and hospitalizations and deaths.
“Luckily, the high vaccination coverage limits the death toll and hospitalizations there to a large extent,” Tom Wenseleers, an evolutionary biologist and biostatistician at the KU Leuven University in Belgium, told NBC News in an email Wednesday.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for countries in Eastern Europe, where the situation has been called “truly disastrous.”
According to Johns Hopkins data, within the last three weeks, Romania, with 591; Bulgaria, with 334; and Latvia, with 64, have reported record high daily deaths. Cases have also surged.
“Despite having access to vaccines, those countries did not manage to convince their population to get vaccinated,” he added.
Data shows less than 23 percent of the adult population in Bulgaria had been fully vaccinated, a little more than 25 percent had received at least one shot. In Romania, just under 34 percent of the population above age 18 had been fully vaccinated, and almost 38 percent had received at least one dose.
With winter around the corner and the delta variant still lingering, Danny Altmann, a professor of immunology at Imperial College London, said he was “not sure if people in Eastern Europe appreciate how punishing the pandemic continues to be in the time of delta.”
“It’s unremitting,” he said. With some Eastern European countries “at the extreme end of vaccine hesitancy,” he added, “there’s no possibility of dealing with this pandemic under these conditions.”
U.S. states both with high and low vaccination rates could look at Europe’s case numbers and take it as “a sign that the U.S. might still see resurgences as well,” he said.
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