Two-thirds of these deaths were recorded in the United Kingdom, Italy, France, Spain and Russia. (File)
Paris:
A second wave of coronavirus has swept relentlessly across Europe, which has reported more than 12 million cases and 300,000 deaths as swathes of Italy returned to lockdown and the UK city of Liverpool tested tests at the city scale.
The continent has become the new epicenter of the pandemic and a total of 300,688 deaths have been reported in Europe since the first attack of the Covid-19 virus, according to a count by AFP health authorities.
Two-thirds of these deaths were recorded in the United Kingdom, Italy, France, Spain and Russia.
As countries rushed to try to curb their peak cases, they imposed new lockdowns despite signs of growing unrest, with several Italian regions closing and Greeks facing new orders to stay at home from Saturday. .
The United States is also struggling to contain the pandemic, recording more than 1,200 deaths and more than 120,000 infections between Wednesday and Thursday evening in another daily record, according to Johns Hopkins University.
The numbers came as US President Donald Trump, who survived a fight against Covid-19 in October and insists the virus will ‘go away’, was fighting for his political life with the country’s vote count. Tuesday’s presidential election still in progress.
“Tired of saying the same things”
In Italy, a lockdown was ordered for prosperous Lombardy, the other regions of northern Piedmont and Valle d’Aosta, as well as a southern region, Calabria.
Giorgio Gori, the mayor of the northern city of Bergamo – the epicenter of Italy’s coronavirus crisis earlier this year – said “there is more fatigue and more mistrust around” than during the first lockdown, after people protested outside his home.
The head of the infectious diseases department of the famous Luigi Sacco hospital in Milan, Massimo Galli, told reporters he was “alarmed” by the situation and has been since the end of Italy’s first lockdown in may.
“I have always confirmed that we have to stay on the alert to avoid the return of problems,” said Galli.
“I’m tired of saying the same things, like the voice screaming in the desert without any recognition.”
Governments are desperately trying to find alternatives to the lockdowns that are hammering the economy.
In England, which has also closed, the north-west city of Liverpool launched the first city-wide coronavirus screening program on Friday.
All 500,000 residents will be offered repeat testing, even if they are asymptomatic, as part of a pilot program that could be rolled out nationwide if successful.
“This is a big step forward in saving our loved ones, our friends, our colleagues, everyone. I really hope that as many people as possible will take advantage of the opportunity,” said Jurgen Klopp, manager of the Liverpool football team.
Denmark meanwhile defended the strict measures it imposed on the northwest of the country after the discovery of a mutated version of the new coronavirus linked to mink farms in humans.
Copenhagen has warned that the mutation could threaten the effectiveness of any future vaccine and ordered the culling of all mink in the country, estimated at 17 million.
“These are timely and necessary measures” in a “worrying” context, said Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod.
Last minute haircuts
Meanwhile, Greece’s second nationwide shutdown has drawn anger among teachers by shutting down high schools and universities.
Theodoros Tsouchlos, president of the secondary teachers’ union, said many high school students had already fallen behind in the first wave.
The second lockdown could further increase inequalities, as some students either do not have wifi access or own laptops, or it is used by parents for telecommuting, he added.
“These are issues the government should have been preparing for over the summer, but instead it acted as if everything was under control.”
People rushed to get their haircuts before it closed on Saturday, though barbers and nail salons are allowed to open for two more days.
Athens hairdresser Apostolos Gelbas said he struggles to find the time to serve all his clients.
“It seems like this was one of the main things people missed during the first lockdown.”
The coronavirus has also struck mercilessly in Switzerland, and in particular its French-speaking region where hospitals are quickly overwhelmed.
In a small hospital, patients with serious Covid-19 infections filled the 10 closed beds.
“This morning, I was asked to take one more patient … so I had to transfer the most stable patient I had to another hospital to make room”, Hervé Zender, chief doctor of the USI of La-Chaux-de-Fonds, told AFP.
The pandemic has killed at least 1,235,000 people since it emerged in China at the end of last year, out of more than 48.7 million confirmed infections.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
