Paris Under Curfew: Europe Reacts As Countries See Highest-Ever Coronavirus Numbers https://www.npr.org/sections/corona...-countries-see-highest-ever-coronavirus-numbe
Coronavirus restrictions are taking effect in the Netherlands, the U.K., the Czech Republic and other parts of Europe on Wednesday as nations try to reverse an alarming wave in new cases. The continent is now seeing more new coronavirus cases – an average of 100,000 daily — than at any other time during the pandemic
Bars, restaurants and schools are being shut down or sharply limited, and officials are working to bolster hospital capacity, to accommodate an expected influx of new COVID-19 patients.
Numbers that showed signs of taking off in late August and September are now skyrocketing. Europe reported more than 700,000 new coronavirus cases last week – a surge representing a 36% weekly increase, as
NPR's Reese Oxner recently reported.
Europe's infection rate "has been increasing for 77 days," the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said in its
most recent weekly report for the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom.
In
France, President Emmanuel Macron used a
nationally televised interview Wednesday night to announce the start of nightly curfews in Paris and eight other densely populated areas in an effort to control the coronavirus in what are deemed "health emergency zones."
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Shut down? Keep businesses open? Mandate masks?
These are all questions that everyone in the world is finding out for themselves. There's no guide book for Covid-19, and despite what we know about this virus, there's a lot more that we don't know.
How does a country like New Zealand with a population of 4.8 million, get through the first wave of Covid-19 with just 25 deaths and 1,876 total infections, while the city Los Angeles, with roughly the same number of people, 4 million has had 16,769 deaths and 868,000 known infections?
Here's how New Zealand accomplished this;
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2025203
The government implemented a stringent countrywide lockdown (designated Alert Level 4) on March 26. During this period of exponentially increasing local cases, many people wondered whether these intensive controls would work. After 5 weeks, and with the number of new cases declining rapidly, New Zealand moved to Alert Level 3 for an additional 2 weeks, resulting in a total of 7 weeks of what was essentially a national stay-at-home order.
In early May, the last known Covid-19 case was identified in the community and the person was placed in isolation, which marked the end of identified community spread.
On June 8, the government announced a move to Alert Level 1, thereby effectively declaring the pandemic over in New Zealand, 103 days after the first identified case.