Europe enters lockdown as cases spike
Print Edition
BARS, restaurants and services prepared to shut down in France and Germany yesterday as lockdown measures return to Europe to halt a surging tide of coronavirus cases.
As the pandemic spread worldwide, hundreds of thousands of new infections took the known global caseload past 44 million, with nearly 1.2 million deaths.
Following significantly relaxed summer seasons in Europe, cases are now spiking, pushing leaders to draw lessons from the first wave’s lockdown as they tailor measures to balance health and economic concerns.
Starting today, France will bar people from leaving their homes without authorization, bars and restaurants will be closed until at least December and travel between regions will be limited, President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday.
Factories and building sites will remain open, as will creches and schools — although children as young as 6 will be required to wear masks.
“(France has been) overpowered by a second wave,” Macron said in a national televised address on Wednesday.
“Nothing is more important than human life,” he added. “We are having 40,000-50,000 new identified contaminations each day.”
German officials have agreed to a four-week shutdown of restaurants, bars, cinemas, theaters and other leisure facilities in a bid to curb a sharp rise in coronavirus infections, Chancellor Angela Merkel said. It is set to take effect on Monday and last until the end of November.
Restaurants will still be allowed to serve take-out food. Shops and schools are to remain open, unlike during Germany’s shutdown during the first phase of the pandemic.
The decision came hours after Germany’s disease control agency said a record 14,964 new confirmed cases were registered across the country in the past day, taking the national total in the pandemic to 449,275.
Merkel also warned against the threat of “lies and disinformation, conspiracy and hate” that are undermining the global battle against the pandemic. Like many parts of the world, the country has seen protests from corona-skeptics, some of which have erupted into violence.
Other European states are also tightening the screws on normal life, with Ireland locking down last week while Spain and Italy imposed curfews and travel restrictions.
Yet despite surging cases and deaths, the UK has vowed to persist with its localized approach instead of a nationwide lockdown. A new study by Imperial College in London underlined the dire situation facing Britain, the country with the largest number of coronavirus deaths in Europe, showing cases in England doubling every nine days.
However, Housing Minister Robert Jenrick said he did not think it was inevitable that the UK would follow France and Germany in imposing nationwide restrictions. “The judgement of the government today is that a blanket national lockdown is not appropriate, would do more harm than good,” he told Times Radio.
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