Coronavirus second wave in Europe will damage Australia’s economy
The level of infections are now higher than in March and April across many countries. This is not only devastating for them but also terrible news for Australia.
The world just can’t shake COVID-19. After relaxing restrictions to resuscitate its economies, a panicked Europe is once again battening down against the pandemic.
Curfews. Lockdowns. Quotas. Cancellations. Closures. All are back on the books as besieged nations come to grips with the reality of the virus’ exponential growth.
The United States fears an explosive new outbreak with its caseload soaring from 35,000 to 50,000 each day in the past month alone. And a nightmare scenario is almost upon Europe with 100,000 cases reported daily.
“Summer is the vacation season and a ‘golden goose’ for European economies, so many countries lifted various restrictions to enable tourism,” Victoria University health policy researchers say.
“Many people had a sense of regained freedom and a feeling of lesser need to adhere to physical distancing measures over the summer months.”
But all hopes for a V-shaped recovery have been dashed.
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COVID-19 has returned. With a vengeance. And that means Australia remains at risk.
Tourism. Trade. Commodities. Migration. All will remain quarantined as the world battles recurring outbreaks with an eclectic mix of lockdowns, restrictions and emergency laws.
“Given that the virus has spread almost everywhere in the world, such measures alone can’t bring the pandemic to an end,” says associate professor of history Nukhet Varlik.
Which is why all eyes are turned towards progress on vaccines.
“Even with a successful vaccine and effective treatment, COVID-19 may never go away. Even if the pandemic is curbed in one part of the world, it will likely continue in other places, causing infections elsewhere,” adds Varlik.
“The history of pandemics is full of such frustrating examples.”
The upshot?
Australia remains an island amid the pandemic. But COVID-19 is getting worse worldwide, and life as we knew it won’t be returning any time soon.
SECOND WAVE
The pandemic’s first wave was abating. So nations responded with hope, opening up their suffering economies once again.
Controversy was universal.
Some countries – such as France – faced criticism for relaxing restrictions too far.
Others – such as Germany – were scolded for being overly cautious.
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But COVID-19 is apolitical. Now it’s back, waging its bipartisan pandemic.
Restaurants. Universities. Schools. Beaches. Sports and bars. All have – as predicted – again become virus hot spots, propelling the pandemic back into communities.
Now France, Russia, Spain and the United Kingdom are among the worst infected nations.
But no country has proven safe.
The first🚦map has just been published!
— ECDC (@ECDC_EU) October 15, 2020
The maps include information on:
â–ªï¸ the 14-day notification rate of new confirmed #COVID19 cases at subnational level
â–ªï¸ weekly COVID-19 testing rates
â–ªï¸ testing positivity rates
â–ªï¸ a map with a combined indicator based on the algorithm pic.twitter.com/5fkPuduWwj
And the onset of the northern hemisphere’s winter is about to make matters even worse.
But governments – caught between panicked populations on the one hand and crippled businesses on the other – are hesitating.
“Europe’s second wave points to an element of restriction fatigue after months of restrictions on daily life and with economies faltering,” the Victorian University researchers write.
The UK, France and Germany have delayed re-closing schools. And all nations are again attempting to find the right balance between trading conditions and COVID-19 reproduction rates.
Meanwhile, new infections are setting records everywhere. The death toll is slowly, but surely, rising. And businesses are closing.
EXISTENTIAL RISK
“Hopefully COVID-19 will not persist for millennia. But until there’s a successful vaccine, and likely even after, no one is safe,” says Dr Varlik.
The question has been posed since the outbreak swept around the globe back in February: should we allow SARS-COV2 to spread through the population? Should we try to protect only those at serious risk? Will this produce a level of ‘herd immunity’ in the population to diminish its risk while reviving the economy?
“Control of an infectious disease through build-up of natural immunity in the population has never been achieved before,” warns biomedical researcher Sarah Pitt. “Herd immunity works through targeted vaccination, and we do not yet have a vaccine for COVID-19.”
But there are alternatives.
Professor of political science Anna Boucher and professor of economics Robert Breuning have published an essay calling for the restoration of migration.
“Australia needs to act quickly with creative solutions to re-establish immigration into the country, even before a potential vaccine is found,” they write.
“The border closure is devastating for people trying to come to Australia, whether they are migrants wishing to start a new life, refugees or in some cases, even partners of those already living in the country.”
And then there are the economic impacts.
“With one million fewer people entering Australia this year, there will be less demand for services and housing. This is leading to urgent calls for a return to immigration from within the construction sector. The continued border closure affects our key exports, in particular international student arrivals. Total exports are predicted to fall 9 per cent in the next year.”
And that’s before international tourism is taken into account.
The answer? Quarantine.
“User-pay quarantine with a robust security guard system is a feasible solution that would allow the economy to get back on track and keep Australia safe from COVID-19 spread,” the academics write. “This doesn’t require a travel bubble. It doesn’t require a vaccine. It can be implemented today.”
Meanwhile, Europe is reeling under the fallout of reopening its travel and holiday industries.
GERMANY
Germany was supposed to be the gold-standard in pandemic preparedness. But it’s now facing renewed pressure.
Berlin’s night-life is now subject to curfew as infection rates soar.
Chancellor Angela Merkel convened her own version of a National Cabinet this week, bringing all 16 states together in a marathon agreement on tough new personal-distancing decisions.
“We are already in a phase of exponential growth, the daily numbers show that,” she said.
Ms Merkel says she wants to avoid another total shutdown of the economy. And a new rescue package will be directed at those businesses affected by the new restrictions.
#Covid_19 in Germany: 341223 cases (+6683) with 9710 (+33) fatalities reported by @rki_de and @ProMED_mail as of 15 Oct ; average CFR per state is 2.76 (1.21-4.46)%, nationwide CFR is 2.84%/ R value is 1.22, approx. 284600 (+2700) recoveries pic.twitter.com/91RaSWbbHk
— thelonevirologist (@thelonevirologi) October 15, 2020
Severely infected districts will be declared “hot spots”. Here numbers attending private gatherings are limited to 10. Curfews will be imposed on bars and restaurants. Face masks must be worn where personal distancing cannot be safely maintained.
The Chancellor singled out the behaviour of Germany’s youth: We must call especially on young people to do without a few parties now in order to have a good life tomorrow or the day after.”
Germany reported a record daily rise in confirmed cases Thursday. The 6638 positives bring the total to 341,223. Some 9700 have died.
“I am convinced that what we do now will be decisive for how we come through this pandemic,” Ms Merkel said.
FRANCE
France’s President Emmanuel Macron has just imposed four weeks of curfew in Paris and other major cities. It comes as a new peak infection rate was recorded last weekend – with 26,675 new cases. The worst rate during the pandemic’s first wave was 7500 in March.
Bars and gyms are closed. Restaurants and schools face capacity caps.
“The parties, the moments of conviviality where there are 50 or 60 people, festive evenings because, unfortunately, these are vectors for the acceleration of the disease,” Mr Macron said.
“We’ll get through this if we stick together.”
UNITED KINGDOM
Prime Minister Boris Johnson, himself an early victim of the pandemic, is resisting urgent calls for another national lockdown. He’s instead introduced a loose three-tier alert system (medium, high and very high) to be applied to regional outbreaks.
But hospital admissions are soaring.
Now he’s ordered field hospitals to be prepared and pressed into service.
It’s already worse than it was during the pandemic’s first wave.
On April 10, the UK recorded a peak of 7860 cases. Now daily numbers are over 19,000.
REST OF EUROPE
Belgium has ordered its hospitals to reserve one-quarter of all their beds for pandemic patients. Spain has ordered bars and restaurants closed for a fortnight, with limited numbers allowed in other businesses and shops. Travel restrictions on Madrid have been labelled “criminal and totalitarian” by dissenters.
But COVID-19’s greatest grip is on the smaller nations of Eastern Europe. Here citizens hold a deep distrust in their governments due to endemic corruption. But the populations also tend to be older, and live in large family groups.
The Czech Republic is suffering Europe’s worst infection rate. It’s now shifted education to online learning and is activating plans to mobilise thousands of medical students. Hospitals have already been cutting medical procedures to free up beds.
The death toll in the Czech Republic reached 1158 on Wednesday, with more than half – 731 – since September. “Sometimes we are at the edge of crying,” the head nurse at Slany hospital near Prague, Lenka Krejcova, said.
Part of the problem, European medical experts say, is that many of Eastern Europe’s trained nurses and medical staff have long since emigrated to fill demand in wealthier countries.
As a result, Poland is fast-tracking its nurse and medical trainees as it rushed to open military field hospitals. “We are on the brink of disaster,” immunologist Pawel Grzesiowski told Reuters. With just 238 doctors per 100,000, Poland has the most overstretched healthcare in Europe.
It’s a similar story in Hungary, where doctors are warning of dire shortages of medical staff in its critically underfunded health system. “To intents and purposes, there is practically no contact tracing in Hungary,” the nation’s former chief medical officer told The New York Times.
UNITED STATES
US epidemiologists warned the nation needed to get the new case rate down to 10,000 per day if it had any hope of avoiding a major outbreak over winter. That figure is now 50,000.
“It’s going in the wrong direction right now,” COVID response head Dr Anthony Fauci told CNN.
“So if there’s anything we should be doing, we should be doubling down in implementing the public health measures that we’ve been talking about for so long, which are keeping a distance, no crowds, wearing masks, washing hands, doing things outside as opposed to inside, in order to get those numbers down.
“We’re entering into the cooler months of the fall and ultimately the cold months of the winter, and that’s just a recipe of a real problem if we don’t get things under control before we get into that seasonal challenge.”
ASIAN SUCCESS
The pandemic, however, isn’t out of control everywhere.
Nations such as Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia appear to be doing exceptionally well.
“It’s important to note there may be under counting in case counts and deaths, but this doesn’t detract from the overwhelming success these countries have had,” the Victorian health academics write.
The #COVID19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of #HandHygieneforAll 🙌ðŸ½. This #GlobalHandwashingDay2020, let's pledge to stay safe from infections, including #coronavirus. Watch this video ðŸ“½ï¸ to know when you should wash 🧼 your hands 🙌🽠pic.twitter.com/aKNfkIepxh
— WHO South-East Asia (@WHOSEARO) October 15, 2020
But, along with their social and demographic differences, these countries may have been innately prepared.
Pre-emptive, targeted testing. Identifying high-risk individuals and locations. Pro-active contact tracing. Quarantine facilities. Volunteer health workers.
All have combined to keep on top of the virus’ spread.
“Having experienced the SARS and avian flu epidemics, many Asian countries took the threat of COVID-19 seriously right from the beginning,” the academics write.
Jamie Seidel is a freelance writer | @JamieSeidel
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