New French lockdown as Europe’s second wave grows

Europe is at a crossroads as a second wave of coronavirus overwhelms governments across the continent. Belgium, the most severely affected country, could breach its national intensive care capacity in two weeks if the infection rate is not stabilised, according to Yves Van Laethem, the country’s chief coronavirus spokesperson.

France’s Emmanuel Macron has announced a new national lockdown, excluding schools and workplaces, after the country yesterday reported its highest daily death toll since April. Francois Delfraissy, who leads the scientific council advising Macron, says France may be experiencing as many as 100,000 new coronavirus cases per day – that’s double the official count.

Germany’s Angela Merkel has announced similar measures, with bars, restaurants and leisure facilities forced to shut down for a month.

Italy has seen an eruption of angry protests, with windows smashed, shopped looted and trams vandalised in Milan as people revolt against their government’s latest restrictions. A 6pm national curfew has been in place since Monday evening for the country’s bars and restaurants. Gyms, swimming pools, theatres and cinemas have been closed until late November.

Sweden, which until recently had kept infection rates low, has seen the number of daily cases rise by 70 per cent in a week, according to Anders Tegnell, the country’s chief epidemiologist. Tegnell told German newspaper Die Zeit that the country may have to increase social restrictions in the short-term and maintain some level of distancing until there is a medical solution.

“Throughout history there has up to now been no infectious disease whose transmission was fully halted by herd immunity without a vaccine,” Tegnell added.

Predictably, European markets have responded with panic. The FTSE 100 ended the day 2.5 per cent lower, while France’s CAC 40 dropped 3.4 per cent and Germany’s Dax dropped 4.2 per cent. Investors are rapidly selling off shares in favour of low-risk assets.

Take a moment to recall the period, just several weeks ago, when Europeans looked at the second wave of coronavirus cases in America with a sense of superiority, passing a harsh judgment on the country’s handling of the pandemic. Some European commentators pinned the blame on bad governance, others on an unsophisticated American culture.

Now facing their own second waves, European countries might want to get down from their high horse and learn from the American States that managed to quickly flattened their curve.

Meanwhile in Britain

Boris Johnson is under pressure from his scientific advisers to implement Tier 3 restrictions across the whole of England before Christmas, and to keep a full national lockdown on the table. The Prime Minister was shown modelling by SAGE showing that the second wave could lead to more deaths than the first, it was reported last night.

The SAGE model suggested that while deaths over the winter would peak at a lower level, it would take a much longer time than previously for the curve to come back down. A graph illustrating this curve is being referred to as “the lampshade” among the government and its advisers, a reference to its elevated flatline.

Sir Patrick Vallance, the Chief Scientific Adviser, has told Downing Street that he expects as many as 25,000 people to be in hospital with the virus by the end of November – higher concurrent hospitalisations than during the first peak in March and April. The dire projection sets Johnson up for yet another row with the Parliamentary Conservative Party, which is already enraged over Downing Street’s handling of regional lockdowns, economic support and the free school meals row.

Worse still for the PM, Rishi Sunak is going increasingly public with his lockdown-scepticism. In an apparent endorsement of a letter by the new Northern Research Group, calling for a roadmap out of coronavirus restrictions, the Chancellor yesterday told the BBC: “I am a northern MP. I represent a constituency in North Yorkshire. I absolutely share my colleagues’ frustrations at restrictions.”

Sunak added: “It is frustrating if you’re having to live under these things and you want to know when it is going to be over.”

One gets the sense that Sunak does genuinely believe that the “cure” – lockdowns – may be worse than the disease itself. At the same time, it wouldn’t hurt his leadership ambitions to improve relations with the confident, increasingly powerful northern bloc of the parliamentary party.

Channel victims identified 

Four people who died in the Channel yesterday have been identified as members of a Kurdish-Iranian family. Two 35-year-old parents and their two children, aged nine and six, died after a migrant boat sank off the Dunkirk coast. Their youngest child, a baby, has yet to be found.

The family was attempting to cross from France to the UK, having originally travelled from the city of Sardasht in western Iran, near the border with Iraq.

Mutaz Ahmed
Political Reporter