Covid-19: Europe is tense but ‘life will return to normal next winter’

Normal life will return next winter, says one of the makers of the Covid-19 vaccine.

The impact of the new vaccine will be evident in the summer and life will return to normal next winter.

Professor Ugur Sahin, co-founder of BioNTech, said that this winter is still a difficult time.

Last week, BioNtech and its partner, the pharmaceutical company Pfizer, announced a preliminary analysis that their vaccine could help prevent Covid-19 with a success rate of more than 90%.

Despite the positive news about vaccines, Europe and many other parts of the world are still struggling to cope with the spread of the corona virus.

Austria is moving from a night curfew and partial lockdown to a second national lockdown, with a period of at least two and a half weeks.

Prime Minister Sebastian Kurz urged Austrians not to meet anyone who did not live in the same house, in an attempt to contain the rapidly growing Covid infection.

Schools will close and students will learn from home when the new measures go into effect, he said, next Tuesday.

Austria recorded a record number of 9,586 new infections every day on Friday.

This is nine times higher than at the peak of the first wave earlier this year. The country has recorded more than 191,000 cases since the start of the pandemic and there have been 1,661 Covid-related deaths.

The new blocking measures, by which all non-essential shops and services, including hairdressers, will be closed until December 6. Residents are asked to work from home, if possible.

Health Minister Rudolf Anschober said that this was the last chance for the health sector not to collapse under the pressure of the new infection rate.

He says the Austrians have done this once and can do it again.

Austria imposed a national blockade for the first time in March, in the first wave of the spread of the pandemic.

Amid the growing number of infections, the capital Vienna has ordered a partial lockdown, including an 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew from early November.

Countries in Europe are heavily infested and some, like Sweden, warn that it is still too early to plan Christmas trips.

In Italy, there have been more areas classified as ‘red zones’, with a high risk of infection.

Campania and Tuscany will face the strictest lockdown measures from Sunday.

Officials in Campania, a region that includes the city of Naples, warned that the medical system was on the verge of collapse.

Italy surpassed the one million infection mark earlier this week and now has more than 44,000 more deaths.

A quarter of the new infections are in Lombardy, where the city of Milan is located. It was the hardest hit in Italy’s first outbreak and the first hotspot for the corona virus in Europe.

Greece has announced the closure of primary schools, kindergartens and nurseries, while the country’s death rate has quadrupled since October.

As of Friday night, the 9:00 pm to 5:00 am curfew is in effect nationwide.

The lockdown and other measures are also in effect in several other countries in Europe, which are also under attack from a second wave of coronavirus.