The head of the World Health Organization for Europe has warned COVID-19 is a “tornado with a long tail” and says that increased numbers of cases in young people can eventually be passed on to more vulnerable elderly people and cause a rise in deaths. Dr. Hans Kluge said that younger people are likely to come into closer contact with parents when the weather in Europe cools down.
“We do not want to make unnecessary predictions, but this is definitely one of the options: that there would be more hospitalizations at some point and a rise in mortality,” he told reporters from Copenhagen, the headquarters of WHO Europe.
Kluge said that 32 of the 55 states and territories in the WHO European region saw a 14-day incidence rate of more than 10%, calling it “absolutely a march that is being generalized in Europe.”
But he also suggested health authorities and other officials are better positioned and more prepared than in February, when the continent was aware of a sharp rise in cases and deaths.
Europe returns to school despite recent virus outbreak
Virus as no virus, European authorities are determined to put children back in classrooms, reduce the gaps between haves and not-nots that were deepened by locks – and to get their parents back to work.
With a view to a jump in virus cases, authorities in France, Britain, Spain and elsewhere are laying down mask rules, hiring extra teachers and building new offices en masse.
While the saga of the American back-to-school is politicized and chaotic, with a flurry of rapidly changing rules and backlash against President Donald Trump’s adherence to reopen, European governments have had less to do with a riot.
And although the virus has invaded classrooms from Berlin to Seoul in recent days, and some teachers and parents warn that their schools are not ready, European leaders from the political left, right and center are sending an unusually consistent message: Even in a pandemic , children are better in class.
The French prime minister on Wednesday promised to “do everything” to get people back to school and work. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called the reopening of schools a “moral duty”, and his government even threatened to fine parents who keep children at home. Italy’s health minister has abruptly shut down discos this month with one goal in mind – “to reopen schools in September in complete safety.”
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