Rome — A customer at a bookstore in Rome did not pay attention to the circular sticker on the floor and instructed him to maintain a “at least 1 meter distance” to punch out the Covid.
“These are a thing of the past,” said Sylvia Giuliano, 45, who didn’t wear a mask when browsing the paperback. She described the red sign and the pointed coronavirus sphere with those lines as “brick-like” artifacts on the Berlin Wall.
Throughout Europe, faded stickers, signs, and signs stand as haunted debris in the fight against Covid in the past. But the traces of the worst days of a pandemic are everywhere, and so are viruses.
A common refrain throughout Europe is that everyone has a Covid because the BA.5 omicron subvariant facilitates the explosion of cases across the continent. However, the government has not cracked down, mainly due to serious cases, intensive care unit congestion, or a wave of death, including the countries that were previously the toughest. And the Europeans clearly concluded that they had to live with the virus.
Seats with faded blue social distance signs are most often used to encourage Paris metro riders to leave this place open. An unmasked German crowd passes by the tattered signs of shops and restaurants reading “Maskenpflicht” or mask requirements. At a construction materials store north of Madrid, cashiers walk down the aisle without a mask before sitting behind a plexiglass window. A recent day at Cafe Sicily in Sicily Note, the feet of three different people stood in one “keep a safe distance” circle, shouting Cannoli.
And many are traveling again from inside and outside Europe, bringing the coveted tourism funding to countries desperate to strengthen their economies.
“This is the situation,” said Andrea Crisanti, a professor of microbiology who was a top consultant to Italian leaders in the event of a coronavirus emergency. According to him, one of the silvery linings was that summer infections would produce more immunity during the traditionally difficult winter months. However, circulating the virus at such a huge level is a government “moral” that protects the elderly and other vulnerable people who remain at risk of serious illness despite vaccination. He also created an “obligation.”
“We need to change the paradigm. I don’t think there is any future for measures to reduce infection,” he said, limiting social fatigue, increasing risk acceptance, and viral biology being highly infected. He became sexual and gave reasons such as “There is nothing that can be stopped”. that. “
Despite some experts worrying about the sacrifice of vulnerable people, so is everywhere in Europe where authorities have comforted the apparently low incidence of serious illness and death, routine. Mutations that lead to longer infections with Covid and more dangerous versions of the virus.
The “element of randomness” that created the new mutation was a “concern,” said Christophe Fraser, an epidemiologist at Oxford University. In the UK as a whole, Covid cases have more than tripled since late May, according to a survey conducted by the Office for National Statistics.
Sarah Croft, who heads the Statistics Bureau’s analysis team, said: Hospitalization has more than quadrupled since May, according to government data. However, although viral deaths have increased, they have not approached the levels recorded earlier this year.
Neil Ferguson, an epidemiologist at Imperial College London, said:
Some shifts have occurred. In April, the European Medicines Agency, the European drug regulator, advised that only people over the age of 80 need a second booster, at least until a “recurrence of the infection” occurs. On July 11th, it was decided that the moment had arrived, Recommended a second booster shot for everyone over 60 And all vulnerable people.
“This is a way to protect ourselves, our loved ones and the vulnerable,” said Stella Kyriakides, Commissioner of the European Commission, in a statement. “We have no time to lose.”
Throughout Europe, authorities are trying to strike a balance between peace of mind and self-satisfaction. In Germany, the Robert Koch Institute, a federal organization responsible for tracking viruses, states that there is “no evidence” that BA.5 iterations of the virus are more deadly, but Karl, the state’s health minister. Lauterbach shares a tweet According to a post by a doctor at a hospital in the city of Darmstadt, Germany, the Koch ward of his clinic was full of severely symptomatic patients.
The German Vaccine Commission has not yet updated its advice on a fourth vaccination that recommends a second booster only for patients aged 70 years or older at risk.
In France, where an average of 83,000 cases were reported each day last week, health minister François Braun has lifted the new regulations in about one-third more than a month ago.He said RTL radio Last week he advised him to wear a mask in a crowded area and recommended a second booster to the most vulnerable people, so he said, “I decided to bet on the responsibility of the French.”
He seems convinced that nearly 80% of people in France and their hospitals, which are fully vaccinated, can survive the wave of new infections, with more focus on data collection to track the virus. I’m matching. “Minimum but necessary action” was the right approach, Mr Brown recently said Told the law commission Of the French Parliament. Last week, a proposal to continuously empower the government to require vaccination or proof of negative coronavirus test upon entry into France failed to pass parliament.
In Spain, where vaccination rates exceeded 85% and more than half of the target population was boosted, the pandemic felt like a retrofit as the Spaniards returned to regular beach holidays and enthusiastically welcomed tourists. .. Encouraged by the low occupancy of the intensive care unit, officials said it was sufficient to monitor the situation.
Not everyone was satisfied.
“We have forgotten virtually everything,” said Rafael Villa San Juan, director of policy and global development at the Barcelona Global Health Institute, a research institute.
But the rest of Europe was even more let go. The virus is widespread in the Czech Republic, which has no restrictions, including hospitals, and authorities have openly predicted a surge in cases.
“The current wave mimics the trends of other European countries a few weeks ahead of us, with no significant impact on their health system,” said Deputy Health Minister Joseph Pavlovich. Stated.
Bars, restaurants and cinemas are full in Denmark, with an 11% increase over the past two weeks, including hundreds of people attending this month’s music festival. “The numbers are positive. No one will get seriously ill with the new variant anymore,” Soren Brostrom, director of the Danish Health Authority, said in a statement.
The Danish Health Authority expects the infection to spread in the fall and will then provide booster shots.
In Italy, which was the first Western country to face the full potential of the virus, reports of new cases have been steadily increasing since mid-June, although it declined last week. The average daily death toll has more than doubled in the past month, but hospitals have not been overwhelmed. Health Minister Roberto Speranza has announced that he will follow the recommendations of European regulators to provide a second Covid-19 booster shot for everyone over the age of 60, not just those over the age of 80 and vulnerable. did.
“In the current situation, despite vaccination, integrated policies need to be implemented to protect vulnerable people who are still at risk of developing serious and serious illnesses,” said an Italian leader. Said Chrisanti, a former consultant at. The virus that lamented what he said was still a huge number of daily deaths from infectious diseases.
Over time, he predicted that as vulnerable older people died, viral deaths would decrease and the virus would become more and more endemic. He said the immune system of people aging in the 70-90 age group in the future would have viral memory and protection.
At that point, the tattered signs of the fight against Covid in Europe would really belong to another era. But in the meantime, another woman from a Roman bookstore, who was wearing an N95 mask, was worried that the stickers at her feet would be relevant again.
“Reality goes faster than the law,” she said.
Report provided by Constant Mehu From Paris Gaia Pianigiani From Siena, Italy. Erica Solomon From Berlin. Coke Engelbrecht From London; Francesca Melendez From Madrid Hana de Goei With Prague Jasmina Nielsen In Denmark.
