Several European countries, including Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom, raised too much “brutally” their anti-Covid-19 measures and find themselves faced with a sharp rise in cases under the effect of the BA2 sub-variant, deplored the World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday March 22. At a press conference in Moldova, the director of the WHO in Europe, Hans Kluge, said to himself « vigilant » on the current epidemic situation on the continent, while affirming to remain “optimistic”.
For now, the number of Covid-19 cases is on the rise in 18 of the 53 countries in the WHO Europe zone, according to the health organization. “Countries where we are seeing a particular rise are the UK, Ireland, Greece, Cyprus, France, Italy and Germany”underlined Mr. Kluge. “These countries have abruptly lifted restrictions from too much to not enough”said the UN official.
“The number of hospitalizations is no longer falling”
According to WHO data, the number of new cases in Europe had fallen sharply after peaking at the end of January, but has been rising since the beginning of March. Over the past seven days, more than 5.1 million new cases and 12,496 deaths have been recorded in the WHO Europe area, bringing the total number of cases detected since the start of the pandemic to nearly 194.4 million and the number of deaths to more than 1.92 million.
In France, the average number of people affected by Covid-19, calculated over a week, continues to increase: the daily average stood at around 89,000 cases on Sunday against just over 65,200 a week earlier. An increase which is also illustrated in the school environment: 3,184 classes were closed on Friday, against 2,693 classes, a week before.
More worryingly, the number of new hospital admissions has leveled off. “For two days, the number of hospitalizations has not dropped”noted, on Monday, the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, in The Parisian.