In the midst of a wave of COVID, Europe counts the cases and moves on

ROME – Customers of the Rome bookshop did not pay attention to the circular stickers on the floor that told them to end COVID by keeping “a distance of at least 1 meter”.

“These are things of the past,” said Silvia Giuliano, 45, who wasn’t wearing a mask while browsing paperbacks.

He described the red marks, with their crossed out coronavirus spikes, as artifacts. “like the bricks of the Berlin Wall.

Across Europe, faded stickers, signs and billboards stand as ghostly remnants of past COVID struggles.

But while the remnants of the deadliest days of the pandemic are everywhere, so is the virus.

A common refrain heard across Europe is that all have covid as the omcron BA.5 subvariant fuels an explosion of cases across the continent.

Yet governments aren’t cracking down, even in previously tougher nations, mostly because they’re not seeing a significant increase in severe cases, overcrowded ICUs, or death waves.

And the Europeans have clearly concluded that they have to live with the virus.

Seats with faded blue signs for social distancing urging Paris Metro passengers to keep this seat free are almost always busy.

crowds of Germanss without mask they pass tattered signs in shops and restaurants that read “Maskenpflicht” or requirement of the mask.

In a building materials store north of Madrid, the cashier walks through the aisles without a mask before sitting behind an acrylic fence.

On a recent day at Caffè Sicilia in Noto, Sicily, the feet of three different people stood in a single circle “Keep a safe distance” as they clamored the cannoli.

And many people are traveling again, both in Europe and elsewhere, bringing much-needed tourist money to nations that are desperate to revive their economies.

“That’s the way it is,” said Andrea Crisanti, a professor of microbiology who served as a senior advisor to Italian leaders during the coronavirus emergency.

One good thing, he said, was that summer infections they would create more immunity for the traditionally harder winter months.

But letting the virus circulate at such enormous levels, he said, also created a “moral duty” on the part of governments to protect the elderly and vulnerable who remained at risk of serious illness. despite vaccination.

“We have to change our paradigm. I don’t think measures to reduce transmission have a future, “he said, listing reasons including restricted social exhaustion, increased risk acceptance, and the biology of a virus that becomes so contagious that” there is nothing that can stop it “.”

This appears to be the case everywhere in Europe, where officials take comfort from the seemingly low incidence of serious illness and death, although some experts worry about the toll on the vulnerable, the possibility that routine infection could lead to a Prolonged COVID and the increased potential for mutations leading to more dangerous versions of the virus.

The “element of chance” that generated the new mutations was “worryingsaid Christophe Fraser, a public health researcher at the Oxford University.

In Britain, COVID cases have tripled or more since the end of May, according to a survey by the country’s Office for National Statistics.

“Infections show no signs of abating, with rates approaching levels last seen in March of this year at the peak of the BA.2 omicron wave,” said Sarah Crofts, who leads the analysis team. office statistics.

The admissions have more than quadrupled since May, according to government data.

But virus deaths, while increasing, were nowhere near the levels seen at the start of the year.

“In general, from a public health perspective, we need to remain vigilant, but this is no reason to reverse course,” said Neil Ferguson, a public health researcher at the Imperial College From London.

There have been some changes.

In April, the European Medicines Authority, the European Medicines Agency, advised that second booster doses would only be needed for people over 80, at least until there was “a resurgence. of infections “.

On July 11, he decided it was time and recommended a second booster injection for all over 60s and all vulnerable people.

“This is how we protect ourselves, our loved ones and our vulnerable populations,” European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety Stella Kyriakides said in a statement.

“There is no time to lose”.

Across Europe, authorities are trying to find a balance between calm and complacency.

In GermanyThe Robert Koch Institute, the federal organization responsible for monitoring the virus, said there is “no evidence” that the BA.5 iteration of the virus is more lethal, but the country’s health minister, Karl Lauterbach, shared. tweets posted by a hospital doctor in the German city of Darmstadt stating that his clinic’s COVID ward was fully occupied by patients with severe symptoms.

The German vaccine council has yet to update its advice on a fourth injection, which recommends a second booster only for those over 70 and at risk patients.

In France, where an average of 83,000 cases daily last week, about a third more than a month ago, health minister François Braun backed away from the new restrictions.

Last week he told RTL radio that “we have decided to bet on the responsibility of the French” as he recommended the use of masks in crowded places and encouraged a second booster dose of the vaccine for the most vulnerable.

He seemed confident that France, where nearly 80% of people are fully vaccinated, and its hospitals, it might time the new wave of infections and has focused more on collecting data to track the virus.

“Minimal but necessary measures” were the right approach, Braun recently told the French parliament’s legal committee.

Last week, a proposal to give the government permanent powers to require proof of vaccination or a negative test for coronavirus when entering France has not been approved from parliament.

In Spainwhere the vaccination rate is over 85% and more than half of the eligible population received a recall, the pandemic seemed like an afterthought as the Spaniards returned to their usual beach holidays and welcomed tourists with enthusiasm.

The officials, encouraged by the low occupancy of the intensive care wards, said it would be enough to monitor the situation.

Not everyone was satisfied.

“We pretty much forgot everything,” said Rafael Vilasanjuan, director of global policy and development at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, a research organization.

But other parts of Europe were even more independent.

In the Czech Republic, where there are no restrictions, not even in hospitals, there is the virus rampant and officials openly predict a spike in cases.

“The current wave copies trends in other European countries that are a few weeks ahead of us and have not seen any major impact on their health system,” said Deputy Health Minister Josef Pavlovic.

The bars, restaurants and cinemas were full Denmark, where cases have increased 11% in the past two weeks, including hundreds of people at a music festival this month.

“The figures are positive; there are no longer people who are seriously ill due to the new variant, “Soren Brostrom, Director General of the Danish Health Authority, said in a statement.

The Danish Health Authority provides for a spread of infections in the fall and plans to offer booster shots at that time.

In Italy, the first Western country to face the full force of the virus, reports of new cases have steadily increased since mid-June, although they dropped last week.

The average daily number of deaths more than doubled over the past month, but the hospitals haven’t been overwhelmed.

Health Minister Roberto Speranza announced that the country will follow the European regulator’s recommendation to offer a second booster vaccine against COVID-19 to all people over the age of 60, not just those over 80 and vulnerable patients.

“In the current situation, it is necessary to implement an integrated policy to protect vulnerable people” who, despite vaccinations, are still at risk of contracting serious diseases, said Crisanti, former adviser to the Italian top management on the virus, who regretted what he said it was a still huge number every day deaths from an infectious disease.

He predicted that over time, as vulnerable older people die, deaths from the virus would decrease and the virus would become increasingly endemic.

He said the immune systems of people as they age in the 70-90 age group would in the future memories and virus protection.

At that point, the tattered signs of Europe’s fight against Covid would really belong to another era.

Meanwhile, however, another woman from the Roman bookstore, this one wearing an N95 mask, feared that the stickers under her feet would again be relevant.

“Reality,” he said, “goes faster than the law.”

Reports provided by Constant Méheut from Paris; Gaia Pianigiani of Siena, Italy; Erika Salomone of Berlin; Cora Engelbrecht of London; Francheska Melendez of Madrid; Hana de Goeij of Prague; and Jasmina Nielsen in Denmark.

c.2022 The New York Times Company