France headed for nation-wide lockdown as Europe sees considerable spike in COVID-19 cases
Posted October 28, 2020 4:02 pm.
BERLIN (AP) — German officials agreed to impose a four-week partial lockdown and the French government announced a nationwide lockdown Wednesday as European governments sought to stop a fast-rising tide of coronavirus cases sweeping the continent.
The World Health Organization says the European region — which includes Russia, Turkey, Israel and Central Asia, according to its definition — accounted for almost half of the 2.8 million new coronavirus -lockcases reported globally last week.
In France, more than half of the country’s intensive care units are already occupied by COVID-19 patients. French military and commercial planes are ferrying critically ill virus patients to other regions as hospitals fill up and French doctors have called on the government to impose a new nationwide lockdown.
President Emmanuel Macron announced a second nationwide lockdown from Friday, but said schools would remain open.
The U.N. health agency said virus-related deaths were also on the rise in Europe, with about a 35 percent spike since the previous week, as well as hospitalizations due to COVID-19.
“We are deep in the second wave,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told reporters in Brussels. “I think that this year’s Christmas will be a different Christmas.”
The European Union, Britain, Norway, Switzerland and Iceland alone accounted for 1.1 million cases over the past seven days, she said, “and we expect this number to keep rising in the next two to three weeks, and rapidly.”
