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The director of the European region of the World Health Organization in Europe said on Thursday that the region, which includes 53 countries, has once again registered a new weekly record in the number of confirmed cases, with more than 1, 5 million cases confirmed last week and more than 10 million since the start of the epidemic.
During a meeting with European health ministers, WHO regional director Dr. Hans Kluge said: “Hospital cases have risen to unprecedented levels since spring” and that deaths have increased by more than 30% in the last week.
“Europe is again at the epicenter of this epidemic,” Kluge said. “I must express our true concern.”
He said that the test systems could not keep up with the widespread levels of transmission and that “infection levels have reached new levels”, with most European countries exceeding 5%.
In addition to the usual European countries, the WHO includes Russia and some Central Asian countries such as Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan in its European region.
As France and Germany agreed to impose new restrictions in hopes of reversing this trend, Cluj described the national closures as a “last resort option”, noting the great damage the measures are causing to economies and mental health. of people and the spread of domestic violence.
He said the closures should give countries the opportunity to strengthen their health systems and contact tracing programs to quickly identify and eliminate new populations.
But many countries in Europe, such as Great Britain, have not. Although the UK shut down the entire country earlier this year, the country’s contact tracing system was still unable to trace a large proportion of communications from infected people.
Kluge also urged politicians to be led by scientific data in their responses to the outbreak. The British government did not act on the advice of its scientific advisers to implement a national shutdown in September, instead pursuing a strategy of local restrictions that until now had had little impact in limiting the return of the virus.
On Thursday, British scientists estimated that there are around 96,000 new infections a day and that the epidemic is doubling every nine days.
In France, officials cut the mandatory quarantine period from 14 days to seven days after concluding that most people are not complying under any circumstances, although there is no scientific basis for a change in the directive.
Kluge said that if countries decide to impose new closures, schools should be largely exempted.
“We are also confident that children and adolescents are not the main drivers of disease transmission,” he added.
He said data from the University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation estimated that a 95% compliance rate for wearing a mask could save more than 265,000 lives across Europe by February 1.
He warned that the main concern of countries at this stage should be health workers.
“While the deciding factors in March were intensive care units, ventilators and personal protective equipment, the only issue of concern is the health workforce,” he said, warning that doctors, nurses and other medical workers are on fire. .
Corona has killed at least 1,182,840 people globally since the outbreak was reported in China in late December.
