Surge in Covid-19 Presents Europe With Hard Choices

"The European Union is confronting an ugly reality as Covid-19 infections and deaths in the region eclipse those in the U.S.: Taming the Delta variant is proving harder than a virus-weary continent had hoped.

Fast-rising Covid-19 contagion in parts of Europe, including Germany, is sparking fears of another winter of full hospitals. Countries are rushing to roll out booster shots as evidence accumulates that last summer's vaccinations are losing some of their efficacy.

Some European governments are also raising pressure on unvaccinated people to get shots by tightening the rules for accessing public transportation, shops, restaurants and workplaces. Although the EU has a higher overall vaccination rate than the U.S., vaccine take-up has been uneven across the region.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization has convened a meeting for Friday to consider whether to declare a new, fast-spreading coronavirus strain that has emerged in Africa a "variant of concern." On Thursday, South Africa's government said it is considering new restrictions to contain the spread of the variant.

In some European countries, significant numbers of people remain unvaccinated, including among the older age groups that are most vulnerable. Doctors in Europe say their intensive-care-unit patients are overwhelmingly vaccine holdouts.

 

The EU has had lower levels of contagion than the U.S. for much of the pandemic, but in the past month, daily confirmed infections have risen fast in the 27-country bloc, to more than 500 per million inhabitants, compared with around 290 in the U.S.

 

Daily Covid-19 deaths in the EU, at around 3.8 per million inhabitants, have also edged past the U.S. seven-day average level of around 3.4 per million. Around 67% of the EU's total population is fully vaccinated, compared with 58% in the U.S.

 

"We knew this winter wave was going to come, both because respiratory diseases are worse when it's cold, and because we saw what happened in Israel this summer when vaccine efficacy dropped off more quickly than expected," said Carlo La Vecchia, an epidemiologist and professor of medical statistics at the University of Milan. "We can stop this wave of the pandemic by rolling out boosters as quickly as possible, but there are limits to what you can achieve."

The severity of the rising winter wave varies around Europe. The biggest problems are in a cluster of Central European countries around Austria, Hungary and Slovakia. Vaccine take-up has been particularly low in parts of the continent's east.

Austria has just begun a three-week lockdown, a throwback to last year that has shaken the confidence of many Europeans who until recently thought they were on a steady road toward normalcy.

In Germany, hitherto not among the worst-hit countries in Europe, politicians and health experts are increasingly debating whether vaccinations should be compulsory for all citizens.

German doctors and health experts say the rising number of hospital patients mainly come from the country's vaccine holdouts -- Germany has a relatively high share of older people who haven't been inoculated, compared with other parts of Western Europe -- but also includes some older people vaccinated early this year whose immunity has waned.

Restrictions are getting tighter again across much of the continent.

Rising health fears and restrictions are slowing Europe's economic recovery, which was already losing momentum this fall amid the global pressures of supply-chain disruptions and the rising prices of energy and other production inputs.

Europe's consumer economy is starting to feel the pinch just as the important December holiday season approaches. In some countries, Christmas markets are facing cancellation, while the ski season in the Alps is at risk.

In the affluent city of Munich in Germany's south, the main Christmas markets, including the so-called Christkindlmarkt on the city's central square, have been canceled.

"Unfortunately, despite the possibility of vaccinations, we are currently far from this normalcy, also because not enough people have been vaccinated," Dieter Reiter, the city's mayor, said last week.

 

Public-health experts and scientists are pushing governments to speed up the rollout of booster shots, pointing to Israel's success in taming a surge in infections this year following a booster campaign.

 

The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control -- the bloc's public-health agency -- changed tack this week and advised countries to offer boosters to all adults six months after they were first fully vaccinated. Italy has started injecting booster shots after five months.

 

In addition, the European Medicines Agency on Thursday said a lower-dose version of the vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE was safe and effective in children age 5 to 11. The recommendation came weeks after the U.S. started vaccinating young children following an endorsement from the Food and Drug Administration." [1]

 

1. Surge in Covid-19 Presents Europe With Hard Choices
Sylvers, Eric.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 26 Nov 2021: A.1.