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The largest EU countries are removing coronavirus restrictions in the hope that accelerating vaccination programs will allow them to return to normal life more quickly. But epidemiologists are concerned that change is too early and that progress can still be reversed.
In less than a week, France lifted the travel ban, suspended Spain’s six-month “alert state” and eased Germany’s blockade. Italy has also steadily reduced its restrictions over the past month, with people soon returning to gyms and indoor pools.
Although it has EU infections approximately halfway they have remained high since the beginning of April in some places, with hospitals under pressure and weekly deaths occurring around 1,500 in France and Italy, 1,000 in Germany and around 600 in Spain.
Antoine Flahault, director of the Institute of Global Health at the University of Geneva, warned that “virus reduction” must be a summer trip across Europe before the summer travel season.
“We need to get to lower levels if we don’t want to restart problems too quickly,” he said. “If some places get stuck on a very high plateau, summer and fall will be very complicated.”
Overall, the 14-day case reporting rate is 277 per 100,000 people in 30,000 countries follow-up European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, 1 April 489 below.
The decline has come as vaccines have arrived en masse, and the EU’s expansion has largely focused on the most vulnerable in society rather than those most at risk of infection.
About 30 percent of the EU population has received at least one dose, according to data in our world, twice a month ago, even though it was below rates in major countries in Israel, the UK and the US.
Many health professionals are concerned that the level of protection remains too low to further protect against an increase in infections as the edges calm down.
It takes about two weeks for rule changes to appear in infection data and hospitalizations and deaths are still longer. So it’s still too early to know which trend will win: whether vaccines will lower rates or push back smaller restrictions.
The thing that people can agree on is that next month will be decisive.
In France, Lila Bouadma, head of the intensive care unit at Bichat Hospital in Paris, has expressed concern that she intends to reopen her country by 30 June. “The plan has very specific dates without any health metrics or criteria. We are very concerned about adhering to them,” he told France Info radio.
France will open its outdoor bars and restaurants and grocery stores on Wednesday. It still records about 14,000 infections daily, but Flahaut’s model predicts it will drop to about 11,000 when reopened.
Prime Minister Jean Castex gradually defended the French scheme.
“We are finally getting out of this crisis for once,” he told Le Parisien newspaper. “If the situation is out of control locally, measures will be taken,” he added, without giving details.
But the country’s scientific advisory group has called – so far unsuccessfully – for France to take a similar approach to Germany, which calls for the establishment of levels before each phase of reopening infections.
Reopened Bavarian brewery in Inning, Ammersee, near Munich © LUKAS BARTH-TUTTAS / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock
This month, German authorities calmed the country’s six-month shutdown to 96.5 cases per 100,000 population in seven days, the first time it has fallen below 100 since March 20. In Bavaria, for example, breweries have been allowed to reopen since May 10th.
But if the metric rises above 100 cases, an “emergency brake” will automatically go into effect, with limitations like night-time local guidelines.
However, Lothar Wieler, head of the Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s chief public health authority, warned that the incidence was “still too high”, with about 173 of Germany’s 412 districts remaining above 100.
Health Minister Jens Spahn added that although the latest numbers were “encouraging”, the Germans “should take great care not to turn that trust into recklessness”.
Similar concerns have emerged in Spain, where the legal mandate to encourage national coronavirus reductions ended on May 9, creating public retirement and severe political conflict. As they go, some regions have reduced their restrictions, while others face legal challenges while maintaining borders.
The initial response from many people was for the party: the police changed the night to interrupt a crowded youth meeting in central Madrid’s Puerta del Sol and there were similar scenes in Barcelona and other parts of the country.
Politicians have not been so festive. The Opposition People’s Party has strongly criticized the left-wing government for refusing to replace the state of alert with the new legislation.
But Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has justified the decision by saying that less than 100 days are left to inoculate 70% of the country’s population. “The state of alert is a thing of the past,” the prime minister said. “The future is called the vaccine, the vaccine, the vaccine.”
In fact, although the state of alert was allowed to expire without a clear metric, Spanish infections have recently fallen below other major EU economies.
But in Spain, as elsewhere, what really matters is the evolution of the disease in the coming weeks.
Bruno Lina, a Lyon virologist who advises the French government, called it a “critical moment.”
“It could be a lot better from here – it’s a bad option because of the vaccine campaign and smaller infections,” he said. “But we need to convince people to keep being careful.”
Additional report by Miles Johnson in Rome
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