SEVERAL EUROPEAN COUNTRIES SEEING RISE IN COVID INFECTIONS

Wed 22 June 2022:

With specialists predicting the advent of a new wave of infections due to slow intake of Covid booster doses and lockdowns being removed, several European countries are reporting a significant surge in Covid infections over the past 10 days.

According to the scientific aggregator Our World in Data, the number of Covid cases in Portugal, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece, the Netherlands, and Denmark has increased during the past week.

Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5, which increase hospital and intensive care admissions, are thought to be the cause of the increase in cases.

In January and February 2022, respectively, Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 were discovered for the first time in South Africa. These more recent Omicron variants can get through antibodies produced by earlier infections or vaccinations.

Among these European countries, Portugal has reported the most intense wave, with infections per million remaining at a seven-day average of 2,043 on Monday – the second highest new case rate in the world, although down somewhat from an early June high of 2,878.

France’s figure soared from 224 on June 13 to 920 in the space of a week. “The pandemic is accelerating again, despite the warm weather,” Dr Benjamin Davido, an infectious diseases specialist at the Raymond-Poincaré hospital outside Paris, told French radio.

In Germany, the seven-day average infection rate per million is lower reached 715 on Monday. The federal health minister, Karl Lauterbach, has spoken of a “summer wave” of new cases.

The seven-day average of new infections in Greece increased this week from 377 per million on June 13 to 681. Although the health ministry predicted that the number of cases will continue to rise, it did not predict an increase in ICU admissions or fatalities.

In Italy, the number of new infections increased from 354 per million to 549 in a week. According to ISS, the nation’s national institute of health, instances increased for a second week in a row, and the transmission rate once more increased to epidemic levels, according to the Guardian.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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