Europe surpassed 75 million Covid-19 cases this Friday (3), according to a Reuters count. As the continent prepares for the new Ômicron variant of the coronavirus at a time when hospitals in some countries are already overloaded.
More than 15 countries in Europe have reported confirmed cases of the new variant, which has shaken financial markets. The European Union’s public health agency said on Thursday that Ômicron could be responsible for more than half of all Covid-19 infections in Europe within a few months.
Even before the discovery of Ômicron, Europe was the epicenter of the pandemic, with 66 out of every 100 new infections a day coming from European countries, according to an analysis by Reuters.
Eastern Europe has 33% of all reported cases and about 53% of all reported deaths in Europe, representing 39% of the continent’s population.
The UK has so far reported the highest total number of coronavirus cases in the region, followed by Russia, France and Germany.
Reuters data show that the pace of the pandemic accelerated in the second half of 2021. Europe reported the highest daily average, with 359,000 new cases in the second half of the year, compared to about 241,000 per day in the first half.
It took the European region 136 days to go from 50 million cases to 75 million, compared with 194 days it took to go from 25 to 50 million, while the first 25 million cases were reported in 350 days.
To deal with this increase, several European governments have imposed limits on activity, ranging from a total blockade in Austria, to a partial blockade in the Netherlands, and restrictions on the unvaccinated in parts of Germany, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Vaccine hesitation is a global phenomenon, but experts say central European countries may be particularly skeptical, decades after the collapse of the communist regime eroded public confidence in state institutions.
In Latvia, one of the least vaccinated countries in the European Union, bodies in the morgue ended up piled on top of one another, unsearched for days, as relatives fought in lines in cemeteries to bury them.
Hospitals in the Czech Republic, where only 62% of the population have received at least one dose, are overwhelmed by the number of patients with Covid-19.
The German Air Force transferred patients with Covid-19 from complete hospitals to others within the country using “airborne Intensive Care Units (ICU)”.
In Ukraine, where only 30% have received at least a first dose, the average number of deaths from the disease per day has recently broken records.
Reference: CNN Brasil
