More Europeans are seriously ill with the coronavirus than ever before, new hospital data for 21 countries shows, surpassing the worst days in the spring and threatening to overwhelm stretched hospitals and exhausted medical workers.
In the Czech Republic, the worst-hit nation in recent weeks, one in 1,300 people is currently hospitalized with Covid-19. And in Belgium, France, Italy and other countries in Western Europe, a new swell of patients has packed hospitals to levels last seen in March and April.
“Doctors and nurses could be forced to choose which patients to treat, who would live and who would die,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson told the House of Commons on Monday. “I am afraid the virus is doubling faster than we could ever conceivably add capacity.”
Many politicians, including Mr. Johnson, waited to impose full lockdowns, and those delays may now be proving costly.
Countries across Europe are scrambling to find solutions. Swiss authorities approved deploying up to 2,500 military personnel to help hospitals handle rising infections in the country. In Belgium, staff shortages have led some hospitals to ask doctors and nurses who have tested positive for the virus but who don’t have symptoms to keep working.
Even if new control measures are effective in tamping down the spread of the virus, it may take weeks before they ease the burden on hospitals.
There is hope that no place will experience the level of death that New York City, Madrid and Bergamo, Italy, suffered this spring. How the virus spreads is better understood now, and treatments have improved. Testing has expanded across Europe, allowing countries to identify outbreaks earlier, when they are easier to contain.
But experts say increased Covid-19 patients mean increases in deaths, which have already started to pick up in many countries, are inevitable.
— Allison McCann and Lauren Leatherby The New York Times