Covid-19: facing the Omicron variant, Europe is tightening the screw

Published on : 12/22/2021 – 04:50

The Omicron variant of Covid-19 is spoiling the end of the year in Europe. “We can see another storm approaching”, alarmed, Tuesday, December 21, Dr Hans Kluge, director of the World Health Organization (WHO) for Europe. “Omicron is becoming, or has already become, dominant in several countries including Denmark, Portugal and the UK, where numbers are doubling every one and a half to three days, resulting in unprecedented rates of transmission.” , he continued.

An impressive figure, Spain recorded a record of contaminations on Tuesday, with 49,823 cases of Covid-19 in 24 hours, of which Omicron now constitutes almost half. The government will hold an extraordinary meeting on Wednesday with the presidents of the regions, responsible for health, to consider additional measures.

The region of Catalonia (northeast), one of the most populous in the country, announced on Tuesday that it will ask the courts for permission to apply new restrictions, including a curfew from 1 a.m. to 6 a.m. and the closing of the discotheques, from the night of Thursday to Friday.

Closed nightclubs in Germany

Faced with the threat, other European countries have announced new restrictions on the holidays. Thus, the Germans will not be able to meet more than ten vaccinated people, or two unvaccinated for the holidays, warned the new chancellor Olaf Scholz. Clubs and discos will also close their doors across the country. And all sports competitions, especially football matches, will now take place behind closed doors.

The Netherlands has closed stores deemed non-essential, cinemas or restaurants.

In Portugal, teleworking will become compulsory for two weeks and bars and nightclubs will be closed.

Sweden will introduce a series of measures, ranging from teleworking to an expanded use of the vaccine pass, in the face of the increase in the number of contaminations, the government announced.

Finland has notably decided that bars should close at 9 p.m. on Christmas Eve. More than 23,000 new cases of coronavirus have been recorded in the past two weeks, an all-time high in the Nordic country of 5.5 million people.

No turn of the screw of this type planned for the moment in France, where approximately 20% of new cases of Covid-19 now fall under Omicron. But the government does not rule out going “beyond” the restrictive measures in force in the event of “a very strong resumption of the epidemic”.

In the United Kingdom, among the most severely affected (more than 90,000 contaminations per day), the government released Tuesday a billion pounds for companies suffering the consequences of the variant.

With AFP