Record-breaking cases as Europe’s latest wave takes hold

On Nov 18, 2021

Medical personnel works at the intensive care unit with Covid-19 patients in a hospital in Freising near Munich, southern Germany, on November 16, 2021.

CHRISTOF STACHE | AFP | Getty Images

LONDON — The latest wave of Covid-19 cases is hitting Europe with a vengeance with a number of countries seeing record numbers of daily infections, imposing partial lockdowns and placing more restrictions on unvaccinated people.

Germany shattered a new record on Thursday, reporting more than 65,000 new cases, with health officials warning that the true number of cases could be two or three times as many.

In the neighboring Netherlands, more than 20,000 new cases were reported Wednesday, a new record for the third day in a row, and in France, where a fifth wave of the pandemic is underway, the number of new cases topped 20,000 on Wednesday, a level not reached since Aug. 25, Reuters reported.

While the Netherlands and Austria have introduced partial lockdowns, other countries are desperate to avoid implementing full or medium-scale lockdown measures similar to 2020 given the economic harm they can do, instead opting for more Covid rules and Covid passports.

In Belgium, new Covid measures mandating working from home and indoor mask use have been announced, amid one of Europe’s sharpest rises for infections.

Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo is keen to avoid another lockdown, however, telling CNBC’s Silvia Amaro Wednesday that while there was an uptick in cases, it was not as dramatic as previous waves thanks to widespread vaccination.

Nonetheless, he said, “pressure is mounting in our hospitals so we have to be prudent, but prudent measures should enable us to avoid having to close down certain parts of our society or economy.”

Covid passes or passports are becoming the norm across Europe, and state an individual’s Covid status (whether one is vaccinated or recovered from a virus). They are not without controversy, however, and such passes are leading to an increasing number of public spaces — from bars and movie theaters to Christmas markets — becoming segregated, with access granted to vaccinated people but restricted for the unvaccinated.

Merkel’s meeting

Germany’s outgoing chancellor, Angela Merkel, is meeting the country’s 16 state premiers on Thursday to discuss her country’s national response to what she described yesterday as a “dramatic” situation.

Germany’s states have been largely free to determine their own Covid responses and public health measures, leading to different actions to the pandemic state to state, although the government has sought temporary powers to force lockdowns and other restrictive measures on areas with high infection rates.

As it stands, Germany’s state of emergency, which enabled the government to have tighter control over public health issues, is set to lapse on Nov. 25.

Some state health ministers have urged officials to extend…