WHO Worried Over COVID-19 Resurgence in European Countries
Recently, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that over half of the countries in Europe are seeing a more than 10% surge in new Covid-19 cases. WHO Regional Director, Dr. Hans Kluge said that in the past two weeks, the increases in Georgia, France, Spain, Montenegro, Ukraine, and the U.K. have reached twofold.
Dr. Kluge voiced concern,saying that a “very serious situation is unfolding before us.” This WHO official cited Spain and France as among the countries that are now seeing more new daily cases; in numbers are higher than they had recorded when the disease first peaked in spring.
In an interview with CNN, the Head of Emerging Diseases and Zoonosis at WHO, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, said that what worries them is that along with the increased cases, they are also seeing increases in hospitalization and Intensive Care Unit (ICU) cases. Dr. Van Kerkhove said that in some hospitals in France, ICUs are currently reaching full capacity. In the UK, the rates of hospitalization are doubling every eight days.
Health Experts’ Worries Stoked by the Approaching Flu Season
In a separate news report Chris Whitty, UK’s Chief Medical Officer and Patrick Vallance, UK’s Chief Scientific Advisor, had warned early this week that if UK’s trend of having new cases every 7 or 8 days continues, the country can expect that by October, as many as 50,000 new cases will be reported daily.
The WHO health officials are worried that as Europe and the U.S. are about to enter the flu season, health systems will be overwhelmed. That is if governments do not do anything to curtail the resurgence of COVID-19 in their respective territory,
While UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is about to impose a 2-week lockdown as some form of “circuit breaker,” U.S. president Donald Trump continues to downplay the COVID-19 health crisis by claiming that the U.S. is doing far better than European countries.
Although it is true that in comparison, Spain and France have surpassed the US’ 117 daily new cases per 1 million, by recording 129 and 215 daily new cases on a per million basis. Yet in truth, the U.S. still leads in the actual daily count with its trend of recording an average of about 38,000 new infections per day.
The number is expected to increase further as Trump continues to defy mitigation measures by holding indoor political rallies in which safe distancing and the wearing of masks are not observed,