Covid returns: 5th wave grips France, Germany gets 50k infections in a day, China shuts malls, houses
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Despite progressing vaccinations, Europe is facing a fresh wave of the killer Covid-19 pandemic with Germany alone registering over 50,000 infections in just 24 hours ended Thursday morning, the media reported.
Germany has recorded a relatively low rate of vaccination, at only 67 percent, giving rise to speculation that the remaining 33 percent of unvaccinated people could be the resource of fresh infections.
As several countries, including France, China, and Russia, battled against variants of the virus, Germany registered a record 50,196 new infections, according to the country’s health officials, who attributed this spike to the unvaccinated people.
For the first time, Germany has exceeded 50,000 cases in a day since the beginning of the pandemic, as infections and deaths soared since mid-October.
Germany’s top virologist Christian Drosten had, on Wednesday, warned that nearly 100,000 people could die in the fourth wave.
Terming it as a ‘real emergency’, officials at Leipzig University Hospital warned the fresh wave could be the worst yet in the country where Saxony has reported the highest seven-day infection rate in Germany, 459 cases per 100,000 people, as against the national rate of 232.
Germany’s Health Minister Jens Spahn blamed those resisting vaccination for the new emergency, describing the current situation as a “pandemic of the unvaccinated”.
As the situation worsened, Saxony on Monday banned unvaccinated people from public places and other states also followed, according to a media report.
Outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel has described the rise in infections as “dramatic”.
“The pandemic is returning in a new spectacular fashion,” her spokesperson said, urging regional authorities to take further steps to check the recent outbreak.
The worst-hit states, like Saxony, Bavaria, and Berlin, have introduced new restrictions aimed at unvaccinated people, who have been the first to be affected by the rebound in cases, the media reported.
Covid-19 has so far infected nearly five million people in Germany since the beginning of the pandemic early in 2020.
The French Health Minister, Olivier Veran, said on Wednesday that France is entering the fifth wave of the pandemic.
“Several neighboring countries are already in a fifth wave of the pandemic, what we are experiencing in France clearly looks like the beginning of a fifth wave,” Veran said on television.
His ministry registered 11,883 fresh cases on Wednesday, the second day in a row with a new case tally of over 10,000. Recent cases have seen double-digit percentage increases week-on-week since around mid-October.
Expecting a further spike in infections, French President Emmanuel Macron asked senior citizens above 65 years of year to produce proof of a pandemic booster dose while visiting public places or using transport from December 15.
In China, the global epicenter of the pandemic, Beijing officials sealed off a mall and locked down several residential compounds over a fresh flare-up, as the latest outbreak spread to the Chinese capital’s central districts in the wake of six new cases found in Chaoyang and Haidian on Thursday morning. Close contacts of people were found infected recently in northeastern Jilin province.
Raffles City mall in Dongcheng, Beijing, was sealed off on Wednesday evening after a close contact of a person with Covid-19 visited the mall, which remained closed on Thursday as well.
Beijing officials said over 280 close contacts of patients were identified, and 12,000 people were screened in Chaoyang and Haidian districts.
Five residential complexes, a primary school and two office compounds were locked down on Thursday, with tens of thousands of residents barred from leaving without mass testing.
