A fourth wave of Covid-19 infections is barrelling across continental Europe, forcing governments to take drastic measures to contain the virus’s spread and stop hospitals from being overwhelmed. Germany, like some of its neighbours, is restricting access to public places for the unvaccinated. On Friday, the Austrian government took the most severe steps of all: it ordered a three-week national lockdown and said that from February vaccination would become compulsory, a first for any advanced economy.
An autumn surge in Covid was inevitable, with the more infectious Delta variant now dominant in Europe. Colder weather has been driving social interaction indoors. And yet the explosion of cases appears to have taken authorities by surprise. Most alarming is the spike in hospitalisations and deaths. Slovakia’s death rate is now four times the UK’s. Austrian hospitals, which have the second-highest ratio of critical-care beds per capita in Europe after Germany, risk being overwhelmed. Hospitals in parts of Germany, where new cases have reached their highest-ever level, are also under intense pressure.
Some parts of Europe are now paying a heavy price for insufficient vaccine coverage. The overwhelming majority of those who are gravely ill with Covid-19 are unvaccinated. The virus is drawing on reservoirs of unvaccinated people. These are deep in central and eastern Europe. Only 43 per cent of Romanian adults have been fully vaccinated. In Bulgaria, it is a dismal 29 per cent. Neither country has a stable government, and distrust of authority — whether governmental or medical — is widespread, as it is in many former communist countries.