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Spain and France are among the two European countries where the coronavirus has started to run the fastest. Starting Monday, some areas of Madrid will be subject to lockdown to curb the rise of Covid-19 as cases in Europe continue to rise. The measure affects more than 850,000 people in the Community of Madrid who will be subject to travel and collection restrictions.
The situation in France is also alarming, where 13,215 new infections were recorded on Friday, a record since large-scale testing began. The deaths are 123, the highest number since May 19, but the figure is distorted by the fact that 76 of these deaths were recorded in an Essonne hospital that today sent records dating back to the last few months, Santé explained. Post France. as Le Figaro writes. But to talk about are the data on hospitalizations and intensive care: 850 and 100 respectively in the last hours, with a city like Marseille already close to saturation level.
The question that many are asking themselves at this time is: what went wrong in these countries? How did it come to such a sudden surge that it catapulted the heart of Europe into a second wave?
France: strategic mistakes and laxity, because Covid flies
Explaining, at least in part, the current critical situation could be the concomitance of some factors both in terms of time, as well as the tools available in the strategic response to the pandemic, and a less rigorous behavior of the citizens. Indicative is the analysis, reported by the AGI, carried out by Vittoria Colizza, research director of the Epicx laboratory, at the French National Institute of Health and Research (Inserm) in Paris. As a reaction to the ‘coronavirus fatigue’ and the lack of freedom of the spring months, since the end of June the habits of the French have changed a lot, especially on holidays, and the barrier gestures have been observed with less diligence by all, regardless of age. . In that period, however, the identification-tracking-isolation system was not yet sufficiently consolidated “, observes the expert.
The joy with which the Tour de France began on the Côte d’Azur, formerly the Covid red zone, at the end of August, heralded an uphill month of September.
An Inserm modeling study carried out last April and subsequently published by the journal BMC Medicine had proposed 4 possible scenarios for the release of France from confinement, taking into account a combination of factors: the ‘test-trace-isolate’ strategy , social distancing measures, including the gradual reopening of some commercial activities, and the adoption of preventive measures by the population. “In fact, two of these scenarios predicted a decrease in cases between May and June, followed by an increase in epidemic activity during the summer months. In particular, one of the scenarios is in line with the hospitalization data for the period from May to September ”, emphasizes the scientist.
Regarding the first point, which is the test-trace-isolate strategy, a new system created to allow France to leave the confinement, between May 13 and the end of June only identified one case in 10, leaving out 9 (underdetection ). Subsequently, the capabilities of this strategy have been strengthened, hand in hand with the increase in tests carried out – currently more than a million per week – of the laboratories and available personnel.
“Figures in hand, one of the reasons for the increase in viral circulation in the summer months was the limited capacity of the test-trace-isolation strategy in the initial phase of deconfinement. The fact that in May and June only one symptomatic case out of 10 could be identified limited the effectiveness of this strategy as a tool to combat the pandemic ”, analyzes Colizza, taking up the accredited studies of the Epicx laboratory that he directed. “On paper, this strategy should have slowed down the chain of transmission of the virus, but certainly a more aggressive system would have been needed to stop the pandemic,” says the researcher. Added to this is the fact that when the strategy in question was launched, epidemic activity was in decline since in France the return to school was first voluntarily – with only 20% of students present in the classroom – and very part-time work for millions of French.
Subsequently, as of July, if on the one hand the ability to test, trace and isolate has increased to around 50% (compared to around 7% in June), on the other hand, the holidays have started and citizens are Tired after months of the running of the bulls, they have begun to observe preventive measures with less rigor, both in their daily lives and in the place of vacation.
“Although at the moment we are not yet able to accurately assess the impact of tourism on the upturn in cases, it is clear that the increase in contacts between people who have less respect for barrier gestures and the exchange of populations between various regions for vacations at the Hexagone have contributed to the current growth in the circulation of the virus “, continues the researcher. Regarding the profile of hospitalized patients, mostly elderly and subjects with some previous pathology, it has remained substantially unchanged with respect to previous months.
Until now, the strategy implemented by the Jean Castex government is to leave carte blanche to local administrations, authorizing them to autonomously enact restrictive measures if necessary: obligation to wear a mask even outdoors in many French cities, curfew, limitation of meetings, reduction of opening hours of activities – with the declared objective of avoiding a new national closure at all costs.
Spain, a mixture of social factors and political problems
According to an analysis by the Financial Times, the exacerbation of the epidemic in Spain is due to a combination of social factors and governance problems. Democratic governments – observes the FT – are generally reluctant to blame their citizens for behavior that is not responsible and inappropriate. Spanish leaders took longer to adopt a critical narrative towards those young people who, by meeting at various parties and gatherings, contributed greatly to the spread of the virus. When they did, perhaps it was too late.
One practice that worries is that of the bottle: large groups drinking in public places as a cheap alternative to bars and restaurants. The Health Ministry is becoming increasingly frantic in its attempts to warn young people about the risk of infection, turning to TikTok and other social media this week to warn that “this is not a game.”
The most common place of infection is still the private home: more than half of all infections for which a chain of transmission is known occurs here. Although wearing maschin outdoors has become mandatory, it seems that the risk of infection at home has not yet been understood. According to a survey published last month by the World Health Organization and the Spanish Carlos III Health Institute, almost 50 percent considered social gatherings in homes to be low or medium risk.
Other problems refer to the rebound of responsibility between central and local governments, and failures in the monitoring and control system. The Spanish central government imposed a tough blockade in March, using emergency powers, and reduced the number of cases and hospitalizations. But the blockade became increasingly controversial and on June 21 emergency powers ceased. In about two weeks, an increase in cases became visible.
The problem – observes the FT – is that the crisis has been greatly complicated by the political polarization of Spain and its model of decentralized government. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez insists that the management of the pandemic is now primarily the responsibility of the regions, whose collective health budget is more than 10 times higher than that of his administration. The regions respond that the central government must guarantee more leadership.
The result is that it has not been possible to gradually reduce the rigidity of the controls, so we have moved from the emergency phase to relatively soft measures and controls. In essence, a gradual approach with true stages 2 and 3 was lacking: some epidemiologists identify this as the central error in the Spanish management of the crisis. The regions abolished lockdown measures but did not increase track / trace personnel, thus not preparing more adequately for a further increase in cases.
Almost the entire Spanish population is concentrated in 13% of the country’s land area. The high population density, together with the marked sociability of its inhabitants, make Spain one of the states most susceptible to the transmission of the infection.
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