Europe ramps up measures as infections spike

An overnight curfew from 11 p.m. will come into force in Portugal on New Year’s Eve, Prime Minister Antonio Costa said on Thursday, as the government introduces measures to reduce the spread of the coronavirus during the usually busy night.

“We have to totally cut out on New Year celebrations,” Costa told reporters after a video meeting with ministers, adding that people would not be allowed to leave their homes between 1 p.m. and 5 a.m. from Jan. 1 to Jan. 3.

Two weeks ago, Costa had said people would be able to return home before a 2 a.m. curfew on New Year’s Eve. But a previously announced reevaluation of measures took into consideration the current pandemic situation and forced the government to take a step back.

“The number of cases per week are dropping but not as fast as they were before,” Costa said, explaining the government decided to toughen New Year’s Eve measures so rules over Christmas were not as severe.

There is no limit on how many people can gather per household for Christmas and a ban on domestic travel will not be imposed between Dec. 23 and Dec. 26.

“Christmas celebrations have to be carried out with the utmost care,” he said, urging people to avoid poorly ventilated spaces and to use face masks during family gatherings whenever possible.

After a relatively mild first wave of the disease compared with countries such as Spain or Italy, Portugal has had a record number of infections and deaths during the second wave though the daily tally has dropped slightly in recent weeks.

Portugal, which has a population of just over 10 million, has recorded 362,616 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 5,902 deaths.

Northern Ireland will enter a six-week lockdown starting Dec. 26 in a bid to contain a surge in COVID-19 cases, Deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill announced on Thursday.

The British region has been in and out of some form of lockdown since mid-October when it was one of Europe’s worst COVID-19 hotbeds. The most recent curbs were lifted last week, when all shops, restaurants and pubs serving food reopened.

All non-essential shops, pubs, bars and restaurants will close on Dec. 26 with the exception of takeaway food services, O’Neill told journalists.

“It will be disappointing to many, but I think a lot of people would also have expected it. It’s very clear that we needed an urgent intervention. I think this is the right decision by the executive,” she said.

Earlier this week television pictures showed patients being treated in the back of ambulances in a Northern Ireland hospital car park, after a warning that COVID-19 was putting healthcare under “unbearable pressures”.

The heads of Northern Ireland’s six healthcare trusts warned on Monday of the very real risk of hospitals being overwhelmed in the event of a further COVID-19 spike in January.

Northern Ireland on Thursday reported 656 new COVID-19 cases, the highest number in five weeks. A total of 1,154 people have died in Northern Ireland died within 28 days of being diagnosed with COVID-19.

Ireland, which has the second lowest COVID-19 infection rate in Western Europe, is set for a “serious increase” in cases following the relaxation of restrictions, its health minister said on Thursday, as officials called for new curbs.

Only Iceland has a lower infection rate among the 31 countries monitored by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, after a six-week lockdown introduced in Ireland in mid-October drove rates down.

But cases hit a five-week high of 484 on Thursday, while forward-looking indicators like the number of people being referred for testing and the proportion of tests being returned positive were both rising quickly, officials said.

“The situation is precarious,” Health Minister Stephen Donnelly told parliament.

The lead indicators “are all pointing to a serious increase in cases,” he said, speaking after what he described as a “very sobering” talk with the country’s chief medical officer.

Prime Minister Micheal Martin later said that health officials had told him that tighter COVID-19 restrictions should be introduced before the end of the year.

The government will take the recommendation “very seriously,” he told state broadcaster RTE.

Earlier on Thursday, the head of the Irish Health Service Executive warned of an “explosive concoction” of factors pointing towards a surge in cases.

The government has focused on the reproduction number, which measures the number of people who become infected as a result of each positive case. It increased from 0.9-1 last week to between 1.1 and 1.3 this week, Donnelly said.

Ireland reopened restaurants earlier this month and was due to lift restrictions on people visiting other homes and travelling around the country on Friday.

France recorded 18,254 new COVID-19 cases over the past 24 hours, health director Jerome Salomon said on Thursday, a tally not seen since Nov. 20 as infections showed an upward trend again.

He spoke at a news conference hours after Emmanuel Macron’s office announced the French president had tested positive, prompting a track-and-trace effort across Europe following numerous meetings between Macron and EU leaders.

Salomon, who spoke of a “worrying development of the pandemic” a week before Christmas, said the reproduction rate of the disease had gone above 1 again, at 1.03. A level below 1 is needed to gradually contain the disease.

With more than 2.42 million cases, France is the fifth-worst infected country in the world.

After peaking at almost 87,000 on Nov. 7, the daily number of new cases had dramatically decreased in subsequent weeks, mainly thanks to a second national lockdown from Oct. 30 to Dec. 15.

But cases failed to fall below the 5,000 target set by the government, and so it replaced the lockdown with stricter measures than initially planned. The seven-day moving average of new cases, at 12,764, stands at a 20-day high.

The death toll was up by 258, at 59,619, the seventh-highest in the world, versus 289 on Wednesday and a seven-day moving average of 383.

Bulgaria will keep secondary schools, shopping malls, cafes, gyms and restaurants closed until the end of January to contain coronavirus infections that have strained the country’s poorly funded healthcare system, its health minister said on Thursday.

The restrictions, which were due to end on Dec. 21, have helped curb a surge in infections but the country of 7 million people still has one of the highest per capita COVID-19 death rates in the European Union.

Bulgaria reported 1,959 new cases on Thursday, bringing the total to 186,246 with 6,196 deaths. More than 7,000 people were in hospital. While 18,907 people have been cured in the past week, more than half the COVID-19 hospital beds were occupied on average, ministry data showed.

“I do not want Bulgarians to be cured. I want them to be healthy and that is the aim of the restrictions … the price which we are not ready to pay is the price for lost human lives,” Health Minister Kostadin Angelov told a news conference.

Nightclubs and casinos will stay shut and organised tourist visits banned until Jan. 31, though individual tours remain possible.

In a bid to help salvage hard-hit winter tourism, restaurants at hotels will reopen for guests on Dec. 22, but they can only use 50% of their capacity and must shut at 10 p.m. to avoid large parties, Angelov said.

Kindergartens and primary schools will reopen after the New Year holidays.

Bulgaria’s chief health inspector said the country was ready to start COVID-19 vaccinations once they are approved in the EU, and expressed hopes that inoculations of frontline medics could start this year.

Swiss Health Minister Alain Berset will ask cabinet colleagues on Friday to close restaurants for a month to help curb the spread of the new coronavirus, two newspapers reported.

Switzerland’s government has faced pressure to tighten public health measures as new infection numbers remain stubbornly high, putting severe pressure on the healthcare system.

Nearly 400,000 people have been infected with COVID-19 and more than 5,880 have died of it in Switzerland and its tiny neighbour, Liechtenstein.

The government’s leading scientific adviser urged the immediate imposition of a strict lockdown on Tuesday, echoing calls by other scientists, officials and medical professionals.

After easing strict measures imposed in March, Switzerland has refrained from ordering another shutdown while ordering restaurants, bars and shops to close from 7 p.m. across most of the country. Most ski resorts remain open.

The Tages-Anzeiger and Blick newspapers said Berset wanted restaurants closed from Dec. 22 but faced resistance from cabinet colleagues to sweeping measures that could cripple the economy.

The Tages-Anzeiger also cited the deputy head of the drugs regulator as saying the agency was highly likely to approve a COVID-19 vaccine this month.

Switzerland has ordered vaccines from Pfizer and partner BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca which are under regulatory review.

REUTERS