‘Covid cases rising again in Europe’

COPENHAGEN: The number of new coronavirus cases has risen in Europe after six weeks of decline, the World Health Organisation said on Thursday.

"Last week, new cases of Covid-19 in Europe rose nine percent to just above one million. This brought a promising six-week decline in new cases to an end, with more than half of our region seeing increasing numbers of new infections," WHO Europe’s regional director Hans Kluge told a news conference.

"We are seeing a resurgence in central and Eastern Europe. New cases are also on the rise in several western European countries where rates were already high," he said. "We need to get back to the basics. We need to enlarge" the vaccine portfolio, he said.

WHO’s Europe region comprises 53 nations and vaccination drives have begun in 45. According to an AFP tally based on official numbers, 2.6 percent of the European Union’s population have received two doses of Covid-19 vaccines and 5.4 percent have got one dose.

Meanwhile, France’s top administrative court has struck down the government’s advice to care homes not to allow residents out because of the risk of Covid-19, saying that "forced confinement" could harm their mental health.

In a ruling published late Wednesday, the Council of State said the months-long ban on all outings was "disproportionate" and suspended the measure with immediate effect.

Responding to a complaint lodged by a resident’s family the council said prolonged confinement could "alter they physical and psychological state of many residents, as numerous studies have shown."

It noted that most care-home residents had already been vaccinated against the virus and were therefore not at risk. By March 1, 82 percent of people in retirement homes had received their first jab and 57 percent had received a second. The minister in charge of the elderly, Brigitte Bourguignon, said the government had "taken note" of the ruling and would consult with residents’ families as well as legal and medical experts on a new set of recommendations.

At the outset of the pandemic last year, France, like many countries, banned care-home residents receiving visitors. It later rescinded the ban after it was widely slammed as inhumane.

In a related development, Hungary tightened on Thursday an existing partial lockdown by ordering shutdowns of schools and most shops and businesses in response to a spike in coronavirus infections and deaths.

The 9.8-million-strong EU member reported 6,278 new Covid-19 cases on Thursday, the highest daily tally in three months, while the death toll also increased steeply to 152.

Hungary since November has been under a partial lockdown that includes an evening and nighttime curfew, a ban on gatherings, and the closure of restaurants, schools and universities.

"From March 8 primary schools and kindergartens must close until April 7," Gergely Gulyas, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s chief-of-staff, told a weekly briefing. Shops apart from food and drugstores, and petrol stations must also close to March 22, he said.

All services apart from private medical clinics were also ordered to close, while working from home should be facilitated where possible, said Gulyas. The government had been weighing a gradual lifting of pandemic restrictions in March, but the country’s coronavirus statistics drastically worsened in recent weeks.

So far the virus has infected around 440,000 people and killed over 15,000. Last month, Hungary broke ranks with the EU by becoming the first EU member to start rolling out the Chinese-made Sinopharm jab and Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine. Almost 800,000 Hungarians had received at least one vaccine dose by Thursday.