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Europe Locking Back Down With COVID Winter Surge Coming for Us All

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ROME—As hospitals and morgues start to fill up again, Europe is once again heading for another COVID-19 winter from hell. But rather than waiting until things get too far out of control, many countries are taking precautionary measures now, with lockdowns and vaccine mandates, in order to try to save the Christmas holidays. The U.S., which has recently reopened travel to Europeans and where just over 68 percent of the total population are fully inoculated, might take note because there is little question that the next wave is on its way.

Austria and the Netherlands are both instituting modified national lockdowns—for the vaccinated and unvaccinated alike—to try to avoid what’s happening in Germany, where new daily infections now top 65,000.

In Austria, where vaccination rates are below 64 percent, a lockdown for unvaccinated this week will be extended to include everyone from Monday. The government also announced Friday that anti-COVID vaccines are soon to be mandatory for the entire population—the strictest rule yet in Europe. “This is a dramatic step,” Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg said Friday. “In the long term, the way out of this vicious circle we are in—and it is a vicious circle, we are stumbling from wave to lockdown, and that can’t carry on ad infinitum—is only vaccination.”

Only 60 percent of those in Western Europe are fully vaccinated, according to European health authorities, and of those, only a small percentage have been offered a booster, which has led to the current threat. Spain, Italy and France are leading the way and offering boosters now to most of the general population six months after their last shot in an attempt to stop the unvaccinated from spreading the virus to those with waning immunity.

The World Health Organization has warned that deaths related to COVID-19 across Europe are now rising at a rate of about 5 percent a week, bucking global trends where high caseloads do not necessarily translate to more deaths.

Germany, which has a vaccine rate of 67 percent, is entering a state of emergency, with tough restrictions now on the table. “We are currently heading toward a serious emergency,” Lothar Wieler, director of the Germany’s disease control agency said Thursday. “We are going to have a really terrible Christmas if we don’t take countermeasures now.” Measures in place include proof of vaccination, recovery from COVID or a negative swab test to enter most leisure venues. New restrictions could extend that to work places.

In Italy, where 84 percent of the population are fully vaccinated and which was the hardest hit when the pandemic first jumped from China, vaccines or a negative COVID test are required for anyone to go to work, dine indoors or travel any long distance by train or bus. Italy has never lifted its mask mandate for all indoor spaces, and while numbers are slowly inching up—topping 10,000 new cases a day for three days running—health authorities say the situation is still under control. They will follow a three-tier formula for restrictions. Four provinces in the north of the country face yellow zone restrictions, health authorities said Friday, which will make mask wearing compulsory outdoors as well as indoors and which will limit indoor dining to four people at a table.

In Ireland, where 90 percent of the population over the age of 12 is fully vaccinated, measures will go into effect encouraging people to work from home when possible and making it mandatory for people to show a COVID-19 pass that they are vaccinated or recovered, for cinemas and theaters. Entertainment venues will also have to close at midnight.

Belgium, where hospitalization rates have been growing by 30 percent a week, will also require people to work from home at least four days a week from Nov. 22 to try to stop the spread of the virus. The country is also introducing a mask mandate for all public places, which replaces the previous vaccination pass to exempt people from wearing masks at venues with more than 50 people indoors or 100 outdoors. The country will also start vaccinating children between the ages of 5 and 11.

France, where 76 percent of the population are fully vaccinated, has seen case numbers rise but hospitalizations and deaths remain steady. The country will require booster shots for everyone over 65 by mid December or their health pass that allows them to enter restaurants and other entertainment venues will be cancelled. “We are holding up better today than other countries not only because our vaccination coverage is higher and the booster shot is progressing, but also because we implemented the health pass very early on,” Health Ministry spokesman Gabriel Attal said. “There are nine times more critical care admissions and deaths among the unvaccinated than among the vaccinated.”

The U.K., which has a vaccination rate of about 68 percent of the total population, has seen fewer hospitalizations and deaths as numbers inch up in line with continental Europe. “I am seeing the storm clouds gathering over parts of the European continent,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned. “We have been here before and we remember what happens when a wave starts rolling in.”

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Belarus moves migrants and refugees away from Polish border | Migration News

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Belarus has moved migrants and refugees away from the main camps at the Polish border, according to Belarusian media and officials, in a change of tack that could help ease a crisis that has spiralled in recent weeks.

Thousands of refugees and migrants have tried to reach the European Union via Belarus since the summer.

European countries have accused Belarus of deliberately creating the crisis by flying in people from the Middle East and pushing them to attempt to cross its borders into Poland and Lithuania. Minsk has rejected the allegations.

Belarusian state-run media reported on Thursday that many asylum seekers had moved into a heated warehouse not far from the border, emptying out a makeshift camp.

A spokesperson for the Polish border guard said the camps on the frontier in western Belarus were completely empty on Thursday, which a Belarusian press officer confirmed, the Reuters news agency reported.

“These camps are now empty, the migrants have been taken most likely to the transport-logistics centre, which is not far from the Bruzgi border crossing,” the Polish spokesperson said.

“There were no other such camps … but there were groups appearing in other places trying to cross the border. We’ll see what happens in the next hours.”

The move comes after a flurry of diplomatic activity.  Earlier this week, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke by telephone twice to Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, normally shunned by European leaders.

And Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday called on him to start a dialogue with his opponents – who swiftly rejected the idea unless Lukashenko freed political prisoners.

French President Emmanuel Macron also spoke to Putin about the crisis.

Germany, EU reject Lukashenko proposal

Meanwhile, the European Commission and Germany rejected a proposal by Belarus that European Union countries take in thousands of the refugees and asylum seekers currently in its territory.

Earlier on Thursday, a spokeswoman for President Alexander Lukashenko was quoted as saying said during the first call with Merkel, Minsk had asked the European Union to take in 2,000 refugees and migrants.

“The European Union creates a humanitarian corridor for the 2,000 refugees who are in the camp. We undertake to facilitate – as far as possible and if they wish – the remaining 5,000 to return to their homeland,” Natalya Eismont was quoted as saying, summarising the plan.

However, German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer outright rejected the proposal.

“If we took in refugees, if we bowed to the pressure and said ‘we are taking refugees into European countries’, then this would mean implementing the very basis of this perfidious strategy,” Seehofer said on Thursday at a news conference in Warsaw.

Shortly before the plan was announced, the European Commission had said there could be no negotiation with Belarus over the plight of the migrants.

It declined to comment on the proposal, with a spokesperson saying: “We made our position very clear – this is an artificially created, state-orchestrated crisis and it is a responsibility of Lukashenko’s regime to stop it and to solve it.”

Meanwhile, hundreds of Iraqis who have camped for weeks at the border boarded a Baghdad-bound repatriation flight on Thursday.

“Unfortunately, only about 400 refugees have agreed to return home. In all, to be precise, in the plane that left today there were 374 passengers, mostly Iraqi citizens,” Eismont said.

“We’re fulfilling our promises, while the EU has not yet fulfilled a single obligation,” she added.

Conditions worsening

The EU recently expanded sanctions against Belarus due to the migration crisis.

The bloc has accused Lukashenko’s government of having lured the asylum seekers and refugees to Belarus’s border with Poland in revenge for earlier sanctions over a disputed August 2020 election, which gave him a sixth term and sparked mass anti-government protests.

Minsk has rejected that as absurd and said the EU must lift sanctions if it wants the crisis resolved.

Aid groups have said at least 11 asylum seekers and refugees have died on both sides of the border since the crisis began earlier this year.

Alongside Poland, fellow eastern EU member states Latvia and Lithuania have refused to accept asylum seekers and refugees aiming to enter the bloc via Belarus.

People who have managed to enter the EU are reluctant to turn back, and many are effectively trapped in forested borderlands as winter sets in.



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France, Germany say Russia’s publication of notes breaks diplomatic rules

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PARIS, Nov 18 (Reuters) – France and Germany accused Russia on Thursday of breaking diplomatic protocol after Moscow published their confidential correspondence over Ukraine, the latest sign of deteriorating ties between Moscow and the West.

On Wednesday, the Russian foreign ministry released a number of diplomatic letters it exchanged with Germany and France to try to show that its stance on talks over eastern Ukraine has been misrepresented.

“We consider this approach to be contrary to diplomatic rules and customs,” French Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Anne-Claire Legendre told reporters in a daily online briefing.

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France and Germany said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had refused to hold a so-called Normandy format meeting with his French, German and Ukrainian counterparts, but Russia said Lavrov was merely unavailable for a specific meeting.

Outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel downplayed the significance of Russia’s move, but told a news conference that this did not change the fact that no meeting had taken place, something she regretted.

“The publication of letters isn’t so surprising. I often read my own letters in the papers. We certainly have nothing to hide,” she told a news conference held on another matter.

But she added that she asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to arrange another round of talks before she leaves office. That he had not done so was a shame, she said, “since meetings have their own dynamic,” and allowed progress to be made even in seemingly intractable situations.

Paris earlier accused Russia of refusing to accept a ministerial meeting with France, Ukraine and Germany to discuss the pro-Russian separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine and denied that it had failed to respond to proposals made by Moscow.

In a rare response, Russia published 28 pages of diplomatic documents, showing it had said in advance that Lavrov could not take part in the proposed Nov. 11 meeting.

However, the documents published also showed serious differences between Russia, France and Germany.

Russia attached a draft statement on the “internal Ukrainian conflict” that Russia proposed to publish after the possible Normandy format meeting.

The Normandy format talks are aimed at helping end the conflict in eastern Ukraine between Kyiv’s forces and pro-Russian separatists.

On Nov. 4, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said in a joint letter to Lavrov that Moscow’s draft had assessments that Germany and France did not share, such as the portrayal of an “internal Ukrainian conflict” among others.

Two European diplomats said the publication by Moscow appeared to be an attempt to sow confusion, but that it had backfired because it proved that Moscow was trying to block the process by demanding numerous preconditions that would make any hope of holding a meeting impossible.

Legendre called on Russia to return to the negotiating table and continue discussions, but in the “approved formats and according to agreed principles.”

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Reporting by John Irish in Paris
Additional reporting by Andrea Rinke and Thomas Escritt in Berlin
Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Matthew Lewis

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Germany announces new Covid restrictions for the unvaccinated

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Outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the country’s 16 state premiers on Thursday agreed on a new package of measures to tackle a fourth wave of the coronavirus pandemic, as infection rates soar to a record.

“Many of the measures we are announcing would not be necessary if more people were vaccinated,” Merkel told a news conference, according to a Reuters translation.

The package reportedly includes a limit on public life for the unvaccinated in areas that exceed a certain threshold of hospital admissions. Merkel said the country was also considering making it mandatory for hospital staff to be vaccinated, and free Covid testing will also resume.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel gestures as she sits down for a weekly cabinet meeting at the Chancellery in Berlin.

JOHN MACDOUGALL | AFP | Getty Images

Several states and cities have already imposed more measures and have required the public to show Covid passes, which have an individual’s vaccination status or if they’ve just recovered from the virus (also widely known as “2G rules” as they refer to whether people are vaccinated — “geimpft” in German — or recovered, “genesen”) in order to access bars, restaurants and other public venues like movie theaters or museums.

According to Germany’s Deutsche Welle news outlet, if more than 3 per 100,000 inhabitants in a region are hospitalized with the disease, then the 2G rule will apply for all public leisure events in a given state. All states except Hamburg, Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein and Saarland are above that metric, according to Deutsche Welle.

Germany shattered a 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.

Merkel has described the situation as “dramatic.”

“The fourth wave is hitting our country with full force,” Merkel told an event for the Association of German Cities on Wednesday, according to a translation.

“The number of daily new infections is higher than ever before … and the daily death toll is also frightening,” she said, adding that it was not too late to take up a Covid vaccine for anyone who had not already done so.

— CNBC’s Holly Ellyatt contributed to this article.

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Covid: Germany cases hit record high with Merkel warning of ‘dramatic’ situation

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The Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Germany’s disease and control center, has reported 65,371 new cases within the last 24 hours — it is an increase of 12,545 new infections compared to the 24 hour period before.

But these figures are likely to be under reported, and true scale of infections could be “twice or three times as many,” RKI chief Lothar Wieler told an online discussion with Saxony’s state premier Michael Kretschmer on Wednesday evening.

The country reported 264 Covid-19 related deaths from Wednesday to Thursday, pushing the total number of deaths since the pandemic began to 98,000 people in Germany, according to RKI data.

Germany’s seven-day incidence rate also hit record levels of 336.9 cases per 100,000 people, up from 249.1 cases reported a week ago, RKI reported.

Germany has one of the lowest vaccination rates in western Europe, with just over 67% of the population fully vaccinated. Around 33% have no protection against the virus, according to the RKI.

This is one of the reasons why infections have soared to record levels, say experts.

”The current pandemic situation in Germany is dramatic, I can’t say it any other way,” outgoing Chancellor Merkel told mayors from across Germany on Wednesday.

Hospitalizations and deaths remain at a much lower level than in previous peaks, but there is growing concern about gaps in the country’s vaccination coverage as it moves into the winter months.

”It would be a disaster to act only when the intensive care units are full, because then it would be too late,” she added.

‘Lockdown for the unvaccinated’

The situation means Germany is on track to become become the next country to impose stricter rules on those who haven’t been fully inoculated. Three parties making up the country’s prospective new coalition government will debate a draft law on Thursday that would see stricter rules to come into effect.

The proposed measures would require Germans to provide proof of vaccination or a negative test in order to ride a bus or board a train, in an expansion of the country’s “3G” system that requires either to enter certain venues and settings. Free Covid-19 tests would be reintroduced as well the permission to work from home whenever possible.

Green Party co-leader Robert Habeck told public broadcaster ARD on Sunday that the rules in effect amount to a “lockdown for the unvaccinated.”

Merkel will also debate the implementation of stricter Covid-19 curbs with Germany’s leaders of the 16 federal states.

Berlin has already imposed restrictions on unvaccinated people, where as of Monday proof of full vaccination or recovery from Covid-19 in the past 6 months is required for entry to bars, restaurants, cinemas and other entertainment venues.

But the current wave of infections is mainly affecting the southern and eastern parts of the nation, where vaccine uptake is lower.

Despite the widescale availability of vaccines this winter compared to the last, Europe’s Delta-variant fueled fourth wave has made it the only region last week to see an increase in Covid-19 related deaths, the World Health Organization said Tuesday.

If the measures proposed by the coalition are agreed, they would move Germany closer in line with its southern neighbor Austria, where a lockdown specifically targeted at unvaccinated people came into force Monday. It bans unvaccinated people — more than a third of the country’s population — from leaving their homes except for a few specific reasons.

Austria, where vaccine uptake is lower than Germany, is suffering an intense wave of infections. By contrast, Spain and Portugal have avoided the brunt of the winter wave after posting the highest vaccination rates in Europe.

France, which has almost 75% of its total population vaccinated, is weathering the new infection spike better than its neighbors.

Nearly five million French have received their Covid booster vaccine shot, French government spokesperson Gabriel Attal said in an interview with French media LCI on Thursday.

“This is a lot. It puts us above most of our European neighbors, but it’s still too little,” Attal said. “We must continue.”

CNN’s Rob Picheta, Martin Goillandeau, Xiaofei Xu and Meredith Ruleman contributed to this piece.

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Nord Stream 2: Gas prices soar as Germany suspends approval for pipeline

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The German energy market regulator said in a statement that it could not certify Nord Stream 2 as an independent operator because the company was based in Switzerland, not Germany.

“Following a thorough examination of the documentation, the [regulator] concluded that it would only be possible to certify an operator of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline if that operator was organized in a legal form under German law,” the German regulator said.

European gas futures prices gained 10%, piling on the pain for businesses and households already paying much higher bills. Leading energy traders have already warned of the risk of rolling blackouts in Europe in the event of a colder than average winter and some analysts say the suspension of Nord Stream 2 certification means it now won’t begin commercial operations before the middle of 2022 at the earliest.

“Nord Stream 2 is the pipeline that can change the supply game in Europe and tip the scale, so delays in its utilization mean the current tight gas market conditions will persist through the winter,” said Carlos Torres Diaz, head of gas and power markets at Rystad Energy.

The European Union gets about 40% of its imported natural gas from Russia. Nord Stream 2, which bypasses Ukraine and connects Russia directly to Germany, was completed in September despite years of opposition from countries including the United States, which warned that it would boost Moscow’s influence in Europe.

Risk of ‘rolling blackouts’

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Monday that the European Union faced “a choice” between standing with Ukraine or approving Nord Stream 2.

“We hope that our [European] friends may recognize that a choice is shortly coming between mainlining ever more Russian hydrocarbons in giant new pipelines, and sticking up for Ukraine and championing the cause of peace and stability,” Johnson said in a speech in London.

Russia has denied withholding gas from Europe this year in order to gain political leverage, but deputy prime minister Alexander Novak said last month that “early completion of the certification” for Nord Stream 2 would help “cool off the current situation.”

Natural gas prices have rocketed this year in Europe, where the fuel plays an essential role in power generation and home heating. Leading industry experts were already warning of the risk of shortages this winter, before Tuesday’s news.

“We haven’t got enough gas at the moment, quite frankly. We’re not storing for the winter period,” Jeremy Weir, CEO of energy trading company Trafigura, told a conference organized by the Financial Times. “So hence there is a real concern that. . . if we have a cold winter that we could have rolling blackouts in Europe.”

Ukraine warns of Gazprom ‘tricks’

Germany’s energy regulator said Nord Stream 2, which is owned by Russia’s state-owned Gazprom, was planning to establish a German subsidiary to own and operate the German section of the pipeline. Once the main assets and staff have been transferred to the subsidiary, and provided it satisfies all relevant legal requirements, the certification process could resume, it added.

Ukraine welcomed Germany’s decision to put the approval process on hold. But it urged the West not to fall for what it called “Gazprom’s tricks” in announcing the formation of a German subsidiary.

“This is a mockery of European rules. This does not correspond to neither the spirit nor letter of the European legislation on gas pipeline certification,” Yuriy Vitrenko, chief executive of Ukraine’s state energy company Naftogaz, said in a Facebook post confirmed to CNN by the company’s press office.

“In particular, we call on the US government to impose sanctions under US law on the Nord Stream 2 operator, which Gazprom claims to be creating. These new sanctions should last at least until Russia stops using gas as a weapon and acts in accordance with European rules,” he added.

— Matt Egan, Anna Cooban, Chris Liakos and Julia Horowitz contributed to this report.

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Germany could make COVID test or vaccine mandatory for public transport

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People queue outside a COVID-19 rapid test centre to get a day pass to visit shops and cultural institutions, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues in Weimar, Germany, March 29, 2021. REUTERS/Karina Hessland

BERLIN, Nov 15 (Reuters) – Want to take the bus or train in Germany?

You may soon have to provide a negative COVID-19 test or proof of vaccination or recent recovery, as the country becomes the latest in Europe to consider drastic steps to tackle a new surge in cases in the region.

Germany registered yet another record rate of cases over the past week on Monday as more indoor gatherings due to cold weather and flatlining vaccination campaigns turn Europe once more into the pandemic epicentre.

This fourth infection wave is challenging a government in transition, with three parties negotiating to form the next cabinet after September’s inconclusive election.

The centre-left Social Democrats, Greens and pro-business FDP said on Monday they would add harsher measures to their draft law under consideration by the Bundestag (lower house of parliament) to deal with the outbreak.

So-called 3G rules requiring a negative COVID-19 test, or proof of recovery or vaccination should apply to public transport as well as workplaces, according to a policy document by the three parties.

It was unclear how they would be enforced.

“To quickly and forcefully break the fourth wave we have agreed … further rules,” said senior Greens legislator Kathrin Goering-Eckardt on Twitter.

However, she told reporters later there was no agreement on compulsory vaccination in some sectors like care homes, highlighting a division in the would-be government between her party and the SPD on the one hand, and the more libertarian-leaning FDP on the other.

The proposal for new curbs in Germany came as Austria’s government on Monday imposed a lockdown on people unvaccinated against the coronavirus. read more

Some other European countries require passengers to provide proof of vaccination or tests for long-distance travel on public transport. But it is unclear if any others require it for urban transport.

The Bundestag is due to vote on Thursday on the draft law so it can come into effect before the expiration of Germany’s state of emergency on Nov. 25 which had provided the legal basis for previous pandemic measures.

In addition to nationwide rules, the new law aims to give Germany’s 16 states a toolbox of options they can apply separately, given that the infection rate varies greatly across the country. Higher rates can be detected in regions with the lowest vaccination rates, namely eastern and southern Germany.

But the new draft law excludes measures like school lockdowns and curfews applied during earlier waves of the pandemic, sparking criticism from some policymakers that it diminishes risk perception and flexibility. read more

Germany’s vaccination rate, at 67%, is among the lowest in western Europe, which could threaten its relatively strong performance to date in tackling the pandemic.

So far it has registered around 1,164 deaths per million people from COVID-19 compared to 1,828 on average for the European Union, according to Nov. 14 data from Our World in Data.

Reporting by Holger Hansen and Thomas Escritt in Berlin; Additional Reporting by Richard Lough in Paris and Andrei Khalip in Lisbon; Writing by Sarah Marsh, Rditing by Ed Osmond and Richard Chang

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Germany Weighs New Covid Rules as Infections Reach Record Heights

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Germany’s state and federal politicians are scrambling to put new Covid rules in place as the country experiences record case numbers, and a top virologist has warned that the nation’s pandemic death toll could double if sufficient measures are not taken.

Nearly 40,000 new cases were registered in the country on Tuesday — the third time a daily record has been set within a week. And 236 people died of the disease in that 24-hour period.

“We have a real emergency situation,” Dr. Christian Drosten, the head of virology at Berlin’s Charité hospital, Germany’s most renowned research hospital, said on a podcast that aired on Tuesday.

Since the pandemic began, Germany has reported almost 97,000 Covid deaths. Dr. Drosten warned that a further 100,000 could result if no additional solutions were found, although the number of patients in intensive-care beds is now less than half of what it was during the peak in January.

Germany’s national government, which under Angela Merkel’s guidance was seen as a model in Europe on how to deal with the pandemic, is now struggling to keep control of the situation.

The three parties that are poised to succeed Ms. Merkel’s coalition government have proposed a set of Covid rules that will be discussed in Parliament on Thursday, although they will not be voted into law before next week and do not include the kind of strict rules that many experts have called for.

The incoming parties said last month that they would let a countrywide state of emergency, which allowed for national rules to be brought in, lapse at the end of November. Under the new law, free quick coronavirus tests for all — a costly initiative that was abandoned last month in the hopes of lifting the vaccination rate — would be reinstated.

The authorities in Bavaria, where cases have been risen 68 percent over the last two weeks, declared a state of emergency on Wednesday. Markus Söder, the Bavarian governor, last declared an emergency in December 2020. Several more states, including those that have been hardest hit, either have in place or plan to enact their own stricter regulations this week. Those rules would mandate vaccinations or documentation proving a past infection for people seeking to use certain services.

“We’re about to have 16 different regulations again, and that doesn’t per se lead to more acceptance,” said Jens Spahn, the acting national health minister.

Experts say that the recent surge in infections has resulted from the relatively low vaccination rate in some regions of Germany and the slow rollout of booster shots. About 67 percent of the country’s population is fully vaccinated.

Although a recent study suggested that 65 percent of unvaccinated people in the country did not plan to get a shot under any circumstance, lines at inoculation centers have been growing.

Two weeks ago, barely more than 200,000 vaccination doses were administered on some days, but on Tuesday, 312,000 shots were given in a single day, a daily total not seen since the summer.

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Germany Covid situation ‘very worrying’ as unvaccinated drive surge in cases

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More than 37,000 new infections were reported on Friday, 3,000 more than the mark on Thursday which had, for 24 hours, been the worst rate registered since the pandemic began.

The sharp upward trends come amid a vaccine rollout that is slower than many other large European nations.

Late on Thursday the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Germany’s disease and control center, described current developments as ”very worrying” and raised its risk assessment for unvaccinated people from “high” to “very high.”

The situation has also changed for vaccinated people, the report said. “For the fully vaccinated, the risk is assessed as moderate, but increasing due to rising infection rates.”

Around 67% of Germans have been fully inoculated against the virus, while a third are either unvaccinated or have received only one dose.

Daily reported Covid-19 cases

Germany’s new wave mirrors a surge of Delta variant cases across Europe, with the situation especially worrying towards the east of the continent, where vaccination coverage is generally lower.

Vienna, the capital of neighboring Austria, announced on Friday it will ban people who are not vaccinated against Covid-19 from cafes, restaurants, hairdressers and any events with more than 25 people starting from the end of next week, as infections surge nationally to their highest level in 2021.

“It is important to me that we take decisions before intensive-care units are at capacity,” Vienna’s mayor Michael Ludwig, a Social Democrat, told reporters at a news conference on Thursday, announcing the new restrictions.

A World Health Organization (WHO) executive said Thursday that Europe’s battle against the virus is a “warning shot” for the rest of the world.

“It’s very important to reflect that Europe represents over half of the global cases in the last week, but that trend can turn,” Mike Ryan, executive director of the agency’s health emergencies program, said in Geneva. “We only have to look at the roller coaster epidemiologic curve to know that when you’re coming down the mountain, you’re usually about to go back up another one.”

“I think it’s a warning shot for the world to see what’s happening in Europe despite the availability of vaccination,” he said. “And I think we all have to double down and recommit ourselves to doing everything we can to be the last person in the chain of transmission.”

The agency’s regional director for Europe had earlier on Thursday outlined out a potentially dire winter for the continent. Hans Kluge warned Europe is “once again the epicenter” of the virus and said that, according to one projection, the region could see 500,000 more deaths by February.

“We are at another critical point of pandemic resurgence,” Kluge said. He blamed two factors for the new wave: the relaxation of Covid-19 measures, and a lack of vaccination coverage in the Balkans and towards the east of the continent.

German Health Minister Jens Spahn on Wednesday warned that stricter measures are needed for those who refuse to get vaccinated. Spahn also told reporters at a press conference on Thursday that he was asked for his vaccination certificate in Rome during the G20 more often in one day than in Germany in four weeks.

Spahn added that Germany was facing a “massive” pandemic among unvaccinated people.

Naomi Thomas contributed to this report.

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Europe is once again at the epicenter of the Covid pandemic

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A doctor monitors a Covid-19 patient in the Covid-19 intensive care unit of the community hospital (Klinikum Magdeburg) in Magdeburg, eastern Germany, on April 28, 2021.

RONNY HARTMANN | AFP | Getty Images

LONDON — Europe is facing a worrying resurgence in Covid-19 cases, according to the WHO’s Dr. Hans Kluge, who warned that the region was once again “at the epicenter of the pandemic.”

Kluge, the WHO’s regional director for Europe, which comprises 53 countries across Europe and central Asia, said the number of new daily cases was nearing record levels.

“Today every single country in Europe and Central Asia is facing a real threat of Covid-19 resurgence, or already fighting it. The current pace across the 53 countries is of grave concern,” he said at a media briefing Thursday.

Last week, with nearly 1.8 million new cases and 24,000 new deaths reported, the WHO’s European and central Asia region saw a 6% increase in infections and a 12% increase in fatalities, compared to the previous week, Kluge said.

The region accounted for 59% of all cases globally and 48% of reported deaths last week, he said.

If the region continues on this trajectory, Kluge said one “reliable projection” predicts there could be another 500,000 Covid-related deaths in the region by February 2022 and that 43 countries in the region would face high to extreme stress on hospital beds at some point in the same period.

“We must change our tactics, from reacting to surges of Covid-19, to preventing them from happening in the first place,” Kluge said.

Record-breaking cases

The two main reasons the WHO’s Kluge gave for Europe’s soaring case numbers were insufficient vaccination coverage and the relaxation of public health and social measures.

There have been concerns about the increasing prevalence of a new mutation of the highly infectious delta variant as well as sluggish vaccination campaigns, booster vaccination drives and the onset of the winter season where viruses spread more easily with more people convening indoors.

Read more: The delta variant has a mutation that’s worrying experts: Here’s what we know so far

The U.K. has seen a sharp rise in cases for several months and cases have started to rise dramatically on mainland Europe in recent weeks, particularly in central and eastern Europe as well as Russia, but also in France and Germany, which have both expressed concern about the increase.

Germany reported almost 34,000 new daily infections on Thursday, breaking a record set in December 2020, Deutsche Welle reported. French health authorities reported 10,050 daily new infections on Wednesday, marking the first time the tally has topped 10,000 since Sept. 14, Reuters reported.

The daily number of deaths caused by the virus remains far below previous peaks in the pandemic, thanks to vaccines, but there are widespread concerns in Europe over lagging vaccination rates and the reduction of any Covid restrictions.

Pandemic not over

Leading German health officials warned on Wednesday that the country was entering a fourth wave of the pandemic and urged more people to take up Covid vaccines, which are proven to reduce severe infections, hospitalizations and deaths.

Speaking at a joint press conference, German Health Minister Jens Spahn and Lothar Wieler, the head of the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases, said a slowdown in vaccination numbers was a problem, as was the number of unvaccinated people.

“The pandemic is anything but over,” Spahn said, adding that it is now primarily a “pandemic of the unvaccinated — and it is massive,” Deutsche Welle reported.

“If we do not act, this fourth wave will again bring a great deal of suffering. Many people will fall seriously ill and die, and the health services will be under extreme pressure again,” the RKI’s Wieler said.

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