France and Germany back in lockdown
As Europe faces a second wave, France has declared a second national lockdown that is due to last until December and Germany’s ‘lockdown light’ will run for four weeks from 2 November
In France, President Emmanuel Macron has announced that, beginning 30 October and running through until 1 December, French citizens will be required to stay at home. They will only be permitted to leave for essential reasons such as buying food, for medical reasons and for one hour’s exercise per day. People will only be permitted to go up to one kilometre from their home.
“If we did nothing ... within a few months, we would have at least 400,000 additional deaths,” Macron said in a televised speech on 28 October. “No matter what we do, nearly 9,000 people will be in intensive care by mid-November.”
Under the new rules in France, non-essential businesses will be forced to close, including restaurants, bars and many shops, while schools will remain open.
Germany lockdown measures
Lasting four weeks from 2 November, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is to enforce a ‘light lockdown’ in the country. Bars and pubs will close, while restaurants will remain open for takeaways only, and shops will remain open, with restrictions in place limiting the numbers of shoppers at any one time. Gatherings will be limited to 10 people, with a maximum of two households.
Hotels will be closing to tourists, and gyms, cinemas and theatres are also due to close. Schools and nurseries will remain open.
Merkel stated that Germany was now at the point where, on average nationally, it no longer knew where 75 per cent of infections come from. “We are in a very serious situation,” she warned. “We must act, and now, to avoid an acute national health emergency.” Merkel added that if infections continued at the rate that they were, the country would be at the limits of the capabilities of its health system.
Situation heightens in Europe
Covid-19 deaths daily in Europe have risen by almost 40-per-cent in the last week of October compared to the previous week, according the World Health Organization. It told British news agency the BBC that Europe was going to see a ‘different sort of peak’ the second time around.
“The good news is our hospitals are much better at understanding what's going on here, but the reverse of that is in gaining that experience they've been working incredibly hard for a very long time and they also know that what they are going to face is going to be grim,” WHO spokeswoman Dr Margaret Harris told the BBC. “The other good thing, in a sense, is that the very large numbers we're seeing are in groups that ideally won't progress to the more severe illness – that's the younger groups. But that's not a guarantee.”
She added: “Those two factors suggest that we may not see the terrible rise in deaths that we saw in April.”