How Europe coexists with the coronavirus
Having abandoned hopes of eradicating the virus or developing a vaccine quickly, Europeans have largely gone back to work and school, leading lives as normally as possible even as the possibility of a second wave haunts the Continent.
Europeans are putting to use the lessons from the pandemic’s initial phase: the need to wear masks and practice social distancing, the importance of testing and tracing, the critical advantages of reacting nimbly and locally. All of those measures are intended to prevent the kind of national lockdowns that crippled economies this year.
“We are in a living-with-the-virus phase,” said Roberto Speranza, the health minister of Italy, the first country in Europe to impose a national lockdown.
The European path differs from that of many Asian countries, including China and South Korea, where even one case can set off an aggressive campaign of testing, tracing and isolation. In those countries, infection rates have been persistently low, although cases have been ticking up recently in South Korea.
Here are our latest updates and maps of the pandemic.
In other developments:
■ High schools and universities in Pakistan opened Tuesday after being closed for almost six months. Online classes were offered in most schools.
■ Australia’s state of Victoria, the center of the country’s outbreak, on Tuesday reported no new virus deaths for the first time in more than two months. The city of Melbourne remains in lockdown.
■ A senior Chinese health official — Dr. Wu Guizhen, an expert at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention — said a vaccine could be available to the public in China as early as November.
The New York Times
