European governments have warned that their hospitals are at risk of being overwhelmed by Covid-19 cases as leaders struggle to get a grip on the pandemic after a week of ill-conceived lockdown measures and recriminations over the EU’s slow vaccine rollout. German health authorities on Friday warned that the third wave of coronavirus infections could be the worst, pushing intensive care units to “breaking point”.
Lothar Wieler, head of the Robert Koch Institute, the government agency leading the fight against the pandemic, said stopping the wave was impossible but he called on people to reduce contacts to prevent spiraling infection rates.
“The forecasting shows that if the measures are as they are now, the [new case] numbers could reach 100,000 per day . . . if this situation is not contained,” he warned. Health Minister Jens Spahn said that the situation, if unchecked, would put hospitals under severe strain. “If this continues unabated, we run the risk of our healthcare system reaching its breaking point during the month of April,” he said.
Poland’s prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki said his country’s hospitals were caring for more Covid-19 patients than at any time in the pandemic and were “a step” away from being unable to treat the previous 24 hours in Poland as well as 443 deaths.
Intensive care units in France are treating more than 4,700 people with Covid-19, the highest number so far this year and close to the peak of the second wave in November. France on Friday reported nearly 42,000 people tested positive for the virus with a further 897 deaths. Some 7.2m people have now received their first vaccination.