Europe looks to lockdowns as fatal fourth wave breaks
Countries that seemed to have been spared catastrophe are seeing infection and death reach new levels: ‘We’re worse off than we were a year ago.’
At precisely 11.11am yesterday, with barely a facemask in sight, the dense crowd in Cologne’s Zulpicher Strasse counted down the final seconds and greeted the opening of the Rhineland Carnival with the traditional cry: “Five, four, three, two, one: Alaaf!”
The mass of costumed astronauts, Vikings and Mexicans bounced up and down as one, downing cans of beer and shaking street signs, much as they did every year before the pandemic.
Yet this November is not like the others. Yesterday the Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s infectious diseases agency, registered a record 50,196 new Covid-19 cases in the previous 24 hours. Until this month there had never been more than 33,000 in a single day.
A fourth wave is rolling across a vast area of northern, central and eastern Europe, stretching from the Adriatic and the Black Sea to the Arctic Circle. Norway, Finland, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia have all reported their highest daily infection rates to date this week. While Britain’s infection rate is falling, it is still four times higher than France, averaging about 170 deaths per day compared to less than 40.
Bulgaria recorded 334 deaths on Tuesday, the largest number yet, prompting the government to declare an emergency and beg fellow European Union states for oxygen and beds.
Bavaria in Germany has announced a “state of catastrophe”, with its intensive care system nearing collapse. Austria is threatening to impose a full lockdown on the unvaccinated by the end of the week. “This is a real emergency,” Professor Christian Drosten, 49, one of Germany’s most eminent virologists, said on his weekly podcast. “We’re worse off than we were a year ago.”
Up to now the conventional wisdom in many affected countries was that they had moved into a “pandemic of the unvaccinated”. States with relatively high immunisation levels, such as France, Italy and Portugal, have so far been spared the worst. Those that have struggled to jab their populations, such as Slovakia, whose vaccination rate is below the global average, are suffering the consequences.
Part of the appeal of this reasoning was that it gave grounds for some comfort, or even for political complacency. It implied that the fourth wave would rage among the unvaccinated and then by and large burn itself out. It would, in other words, be containable.
There was no need to pay too much heed to infection rates and there would be no need for universal lockdowns. Those who had done their bit and got the jab could carry on much as before.
That wisdom is beginning to look questionable. There is evidence from German hospitals that vaccinated people have gone from making up scarcely one in ten of the patients on their coronavirus wards to nearly half. This is partly because the clinically vulnerable who were first in line for the jab are seeing their immunity wane, raising the tally of “breakthrough” infections.
There are other reasons to be concerned. “The Delta variant has reshuffled the cards,” Drosten, one of Angela Merkel’s most trusted scientific advisors, said. “Soon it will very swiftly become transmissible among the vaccinated. So we have a situation here where the virus can spread throughout the whole of society, and its spread is in fact bolstered by vaccinated people. That’s what we’re seeing at the moment.”
Germany may well be on the cusp of its most harrowing months. On present trends its intensive care units, depleted by a shortage of nurses, will be full in weeks and it will record its 100,000th Covid death within a fortnight.
The vaccination centres are closed. The free rapid tests offered by the state were abolished a month ago, although they may soon be back. The much-admired contact-tracing system has gone into meltdown. A booster vaccination campaign is under way but so far only 3.3 million doses have been administered.
The federal government, caught between the twilight of the Merkel years and the beginning of a three-party ruling coalition under Olaf Scholz, has been slow to respond and has few decisive options left on the table, having ruled out a return to lockdown.
“We’ve lost control,” Alexander Kekule, 63, professor of medical microbiology and virology at Halle-Wittenberg University, said on a podcast. “Really the politicians have long given up the battle on a number of measures. And the virus is rejoicing, if I may put it like this, and cheerfully replicating.”
Kekule believes that Germany will be left with no alternative but to impose a lockdown in all but name, with schools closed and public and private gatherings strictly regulated. “Actually, I think they will do something like a lockdown through the back door,” he said. “They won’t call it a lockdown, because that’s become a taboo in politics.
Germany’s neighbours are faced with much the same dilemma. Vaccination and general weariness have made lockdowns politically unpalatable. Yet inaction is equally impossible.
Austria, with one of the highest infection rates in the EU, has already banned unvaccinated people from bars, restaurants, cinemas and other public venues. Alexander Schallenberg, 52, the new chancellor, said they would be subjected to more stringent controls in days.
The Netherlands registered a record number of Covid infections yesterday (Thursday), 16,364, breaking previous highs from December last year. The Dutch government is discussing advice from experts that the country needs “lockdown-like measures” to halt the spiralling infections.
Ministers will discuss cancelling large indoor events, and shutting down cinemas and theatres with earlier closing for restaurants and cafes. The Netherlands Covid pass will be tightened to include only the fully vaccinated or those who have recovered from the virus, excluding people who have had a negative test but are not yet jabbed.
Hungary has stopped hospital visits, brought back facemasks on public transport and told employers they can insist that staff are vaccinated.
Denmark, which celebrated a “freedom day” of its own in September, will revive its coronavirus passport system today. Norway is dusting off discarded measures such as compulsory tests at its borders and mass testing in schools.
Finland, one of the few European countries to have come through comparatively unscathed, decided this week to postpone the end of its final restrictions.
Even Sweden, more laissez-faire than other EU states and with a relatively low incidence of Covid, may be forced to act. Modelling suggests that up to 5,400 Swedes could die over the next six months if the fourth wave is left unchecked. “The way things are developing in many of the EU countries right now is an alarm bell,” Dr Anders Tegnell, 65, the state epidemiologist, told Dagens Nyheter. ” We believe an increase [in infections] during the autumn and into the winter to be virtually inevitable.”
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