High risk of autumn Covid surge in Europe despite drop in infections, says WHO

[brooklynite]

Source: The Guardian

Covid-19 infections, hospitalisations and deaths are falling fast across Europe, but the risk of a deadly autumn resurgence remains high as societies open up and the more transmissible Delta variant advances, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said.

The warning came as new case numbers continued to plunge in most of the continent, falling in some areas to their lowest levels since August, and multiple governments, including France and Germany, relaxed restrictions further.

Urging people and governments to exercise “caution and common sense” over the summer, the WHO Europe’s regional director, Hans Kluge, said on Thursday that community transmission was still widespread and would continue as travel and social gatherings increased.

“We’ve been here before,” Kluge said. “Last summer, cases gradually rose in younger age groups, then moved into older age groups, leading to a devastating … loss of life in the autumn and winter of 2020. Let’s not make that mistake again.”

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2021/jun/10/coronavirus-live-news-us-donate-vaccine-doses-uk-health-secretary-aged-care-g7-who-inquiry-origins

[peppertree]

1. Europe - and everywhere else.

South America has been a good canary in the coal mine on this.

As soon as cooler fall temperatures arrived in March - and children went back to school - the number of new cases began to skyrocket again.

True, they had these highly-contagious Andes and Manaus strains - but what they're going through should serve as fair warning to everyone else.

[IronLionZion]

2. I would not want to be an unvaccinated conservative right now

as the variants spread indoors in air conditioned spaces this summer

[Evolve Dammit]

3. It seems the question will be how well the vaccines hold up against the various variants?

[progree]

4. U.K. daily new cases up 131% in last 14 days (7 day moving average)

Last 14 days is actually 7 day average ending June 9 compared to 7 day average ending May 26. A 131% increase is a 2.31 fold increase.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/world/united-kingdom-covid-cases.html


https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/world/covid-cases.html
Their daily new case rate is 8.8 per 100,000
compare to U.S. 4.5 per 100,000

[BigmanPigman]

5. Oh shit, they had been doing really well too.

The Delta variant is going to do a lot of harm. Everyone has been warning us about it this past week.