While the COVID-19 pandemic has stagnated in Europe since early August, the region has been experiencing an epidemic rebound since early October, both in terms of the number of cases and in terms of the number of deaths, according to an established report Monday by AFP from official reports.
During the last seven days, some 1,672,000 cases – an average of 239,000 cases per day – have been recorded in the region, made up of 52 countries and territories (in the east, up to Azerbaijan and Russia ).
This is an increase of 18% from the previous week, and about 60% from August and September, when the number of new cases stagnated around 150,000 per day.
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Forty-two countries in the region have seen increased contamination in the past seven days, while only seven have recorded declining figures.
The current figures remain lower than the highest figures reached in the region, with an average of 284,000 cases per day between 2 and 8 November 2020. But Europe currently accounts for more than 55% of new infections in the world.
Geography of increases
Excluding micro-states, the country most affected by this epidemic rebound is the Czech Republic, with an average of around 3,100 cases per day over the past seven days, an increase of 124% from the previous week. Hungary follows with 2,000 cases per day, up 104%, and Poland with nearly 5,000 cases per day and an increase of 95%.
According to data reported to their population, the countries which currently have the most contaminations in Europe are Latvia, with 880 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in the last seven days, Estonia (753) and Georgia (736).
The number of deaths is also on the rise in the region: 3,120 daily deaths were recorded on average in the past week, up 16% from the previous week. An average of more than 3,000 deaths per day had not been reached since the beginning of May, but these figures remain far from the record of 5,735 daily deaths on average in Europe during the week of January 14 to 20.
More than a third of the deaths recorded in Europe are currently in Russia (1051 deaths on average every day), followed by Ukraine (485) and Romania (420).
Sub-variant to the exam
A subvariant of the Delta which is spreading in the United Kingdom worries the health authorities of the country. The new form of the virus seems a priori more transmissible, but not more dangerous.
The variant “AY.4.2” last week accounted for 6% of total cases in the UK, said in its weekly bulletin the UK Health Security Agency, which classified it as “variant under investigation”. It does not therefore represent a “worrying variant” and is not for the moment decked out with a Greek letter.
“Preliminary evidence seems to prove that it has a higher transmission rate compared to the Delta,” said the British public health agency. “More evidence is needed to determine if this is related to a change in the behavior of the virus or to epidemiological conditions,” she added.
On the other hand, this variant does not cause more hospitalizations and “does not appear to cause a more serious version of the disease or to make the vaccines currently distributed less effective”. The variant AY.4.2 therefore does not appear to be capable of modifying the trajectory of the pandemic. However, it proves that SARS-CoV-2 still has the potential to evolve into new, more transmissible mutations.
With Le Devoir