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Larger EU countries lift coronavirus restrictions in the hope that accelerating vaccination programs will allow a faster return to normal life. But epidemiologists worry that change will come too soon and that progress can still be reversed.
For just over a week, France lifted the travel ban, Spain dropped its six-month “alert state” and Germany relaxed the closure. Italy has also steadily eased restrictions over the past month, and people plan to return to gyms and indoor pools soon.
Although EU infections do about half since early April, they have remained high in some places, with hospitals under pressure and deaths per week still around 1,500 in France and Italy, 1,000 in Germany and about 600 in Spain.
Antoine Flahault, director of the Institute of Global Health at the University of Geneva, warned that the goal “should be to reduce the virus” across Europe before the summer travel season.
“We need to get to lower levels if we don’t want to restart problems too quickly,” he said. “If some places get stuck on a moderate to high plateau, summer and fall will be very complicated.”
Overall, the 14-day case notification rate stands at 277 per 100,000 people in 30 countries tracked by the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, from 489 on 1 April.
The fall has come as vaccines have arrived en masse and as the EU’s implementation has focused mainly on the most vulnerable people in society rather than the people most at risk of infection.
About 30% of the EU population has received at least one dose, according to Our World in Data, twice as much as a month ago, although it is still well below the rates of the leading countries Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States. United States.
But many health professionals are concerned that the level of protection is too low to protect themselves from further increases in infections as the curbs relax.
Changes to the rules take about two weeks to appear on infection data and hospitalizations and deaths still take time. So it’s still early to know which trend will win: vaccinations push rates or restrict looser restrictions.
The only thing people can agree on is that next month will be crucial.
In France, Lila Bouadma, who heads an intensive care unit at Paris’s Bichat Hospital and advises the government, expressed concern about her country’s plan to reopen on June 30. “The fact that the plan has very specific dates without metrics or health criteria linked to them worries us a lot,” he told France Info radio.
France will reopen open-air bars and restaurants and non-food outlets on Wednesday. It still records about 14,000 infections daily, but Flahaut’s model predicts it will reopen to 11,000.
Prime Minister Jean Castex defended the French scheme as gradual.
“We are finally coming out of this crisis once and for all,” he told the newspaper Le Parisien. “Measures will be taken if the situation gets out of control locally,” he added, without giving details.
But the country’s scientific advisory group has called – hitherto unsuccessfully – for France to take a similar approach to Germany, which requires infections to fall to set levels before each reopening phase.
A Bavarian brewery reopened in Inning on the Amersee, near Munich © LUKAS BARTH-TUTTAS / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock
This month, German authorities relaxed the country’s six-month closure after the incidence was reduced to 96.5 cases per 100,000 people for seven days, the first time it has fallen below 100 since March 20. In Bavaria, for example, there are breweries, cinemas and theaters. it has been allowed to reopen since May 10th.
But if the metric again exceeds 100 cases, an “emergency brake” will automatically take effect, with restrictions such as night curfews.
However, Lothar Wieler, head of the Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s top public health authority, warned that the incidence remained “still too high” and that some 173 of Germany’s 412 districts remained above of the 100.
Health Minister Jens Spahn added that while the latest numbers were “rewarding”, Germans should “be very careful not to let that confidence become reckless”.
Similar concerns have been expressed in Spain, where the legal order underlying national coronavirus restrictions ended on May 9, leading to public retirement and bitter political disputes. With its passage, some regions have reduced restrictions, while others face legal issues to keep the boundaries in place.
The initial response from many people was the party: the police broke up a mass gathering of young people at the Puerta del Sol in Madrid the night before the change and there were similar scenes in Barcelona and other places in the country.
Politicians have been less festive. The opposition People’s Party has fiercely criticized the left-wing government’s refusal to replace the state of alert with new legislation.
But Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has justified the decision by saying the country is less than 100 days away from inoculating 70% of the population. “The state of alert is the past,” the prime minister said. “The future is called vaccination, vaccination, vaccination.”
In fact, while the alert state was allowed to expire without clear metrics, infections in Spain have recently been lower than other major EU economies.
But in Spain, as elsewhere, what really matters is the course of the disease over the next few weeks.
Bruno Lina, a virologist from Lyon who advises the French government, described what he called a “critical situation”.
“It could really improve a lot from here, it’s a real possibility considering the vaccination campaign and lower infections,” he said. “But we need to convince the public to continue to be careful.”
Additional reports from Miles Johnson in Rome
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