Covid in Europe: How the continent reached a crisis point as cases, deaths and hospitalisations surg

As countries speed up their Covid-19 booster vaccine rollouts and inoculations of children, Europe is nearing a crisis point with cases, deaths and hospitalisations and rising.

Austria has imposed a 10-day lockdown for the vaccinated, the Netherlands has returned to a partial lockdown, and parts of Eastern Europe have reported record daily death numbers.

While Britain extends its booster jab rollout to people between 40 and 49 to boost waning immunity ahead of the colder winter months, a World Health Organisation official declared earlier this month that Europe is again at the epicentre of the pandemic. They added that Romania, Bulgaria and the Balkan states recorded some of the highest per-capita death rates in the world in the first week of November.

So why does Europe appear to be losing the battle again?

Experts say fumbled vaccination campaigns and underfunded and mismanaged health systems have set the stage for the latest outbreaks – as well as government nonchalance and dithering. These are some of the worst affected countries:

Austria

Unvaccinated people in Austria have been put into another lockdown as coronavirus cases surge. From Monday, around two million people are now only able to leave their homes for a limited number of reasons and will be subjected to police checks to make sure they are complying with the new rules.

In recent weeks, the country has faced a worrying trend in infections. The country reported 11,552 new cases on Sunday, while a week ago there were 8,554 new infections.

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Only 65 per cent of the population has been vaccinated, one of the lowest rates in western Europe.

Many Austrians are sceptical about vaccines, a view encouraged by the far-right Freedom Party, the third-biggest in parliament.

The Netherlands

The Netherlands imposed a partial lockdown on Saturday in a bid to stop a surge in Covid cases. People have been urged to work from home as much as possible, the government ordered restaurants and shops to close early and barred spectators from major sporting events.

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On Monday, public health agency RIVM reported that more than 19,000 people tested positive for coronavirus in the last 24 hours, breaking the previous daily record by almost 3,000. Figures also showed 19.2 per cent of all tests had a positive result, itself a record, while the seven-day average figure climbed to 14,499.

Ernst Kuipers, chair of the national acute care network LNAZ, said at the current rate, the number of patients in hospital was on course to reach last winter’s peak level of 2,800.

Germany

The country’s infection rate has risen to its highest level since the start of the pandemic and the three parties are in talks to consider drastic steps to tackle a new surge in cases.

On Tuesday, the Robert Koch Institute reported another increase in cases, which over the past seven days climbed to a record 312.4 per 100,000 people. Deaths jumped by 265, the steepest one-day increase since 27 May.

Since Monday, access to restaurants, cinemas and museums in Berlin has been limited to people who have been vaccinated or recently recovered.

The Balkans

At the main hospital in Romania‘s capital Bucharest, the morgue ran out of space for the dead in recent days, and doctors in Bulgaria have suspended routine surgeries so they can tend to a surge in Covid patients. In the Serbian capital Belgrade, the graveyard now operates an extra day during the week in order to bury all the bodies arriving.

Many governments in the region are facing elections soon, making them possibly reluctant to force people to get vaccinated or impose unpopular lockdowns, even in former Communist nations that once carried out mandatory inoculations without hesitation or where leaders were quick to introduce closures earlier in the pandemic.

Last month, as Serbia sustained some of its worst daily death tolls of the pandemic, Prime Minister Ana Brnabic said: “I don’t believe in measures. I don’t believe in the same measures that existed before the vaccines. Why do we have vaccines then?”

Bulgaria and Romania have fully vaccinated just 23 per cent and 35 per cent of their populations, respectively. Bosnia and Herzegovina has just 21 per cent fully vaccinated.

Additional reporting by AP