While 2020 was a lost year for international travel — or any kind of travel actually — this might not be the year for a European vacation either.
The U.S. has grown weary of dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and dozens of states have simply decided they will no longer enforce any health restrictions, yet COVID-19 storm clouds have once again gathered over Europe.
Variants of the COVID-19 virus are surging in Europe. Never mind Texas or Florida, Mississippi, or Montana … the UK variant is overtaking Europe.
On Sunday, Italy entered a new lockdown, impacting three-quarters of the country. In Milan, for instance, the local government doesn’t just require face masks and social distancing, it has instituted one-way pedestrian traffic on sidewalks.
A more contagious variant first identified in Britain, combined with a slow vaccine rollout, led to a 15 percent increase in cases in Italy in just one week. At the same time, fewer than two million people in the country have been fully vaccinated so far, partly because of late deliveries from the pharmaceutical manufacturers, but also because of logistical problems in some regions.
Italy, with a population of 60.3 million, is one of the hardest-hit countries in the world: The coronavirus has killed more than 100,000 people and infected 3.2 million.
Not only are the new variants more contagious, but researchers also say they now have proof they are more deadly. A study published this week in Nature, “Increased mortality in community-tested cases of SARS-CoV-2 lineage B.1.1.7”, find that B.1.1.7, the UK coronavirus variant identified in late 2020, is associated with 55 percent higher COVID-19 mortality than other virus strains.
In France, Prime Minister Jean Castex said on Sunday that the country had to “use all weapons available to avoid a lockdown,” urging people to get vaccinated and tested for the virus. Reuters reported that the French government has so far rejected pressure from health experts to institute a third national lockdown as infections and deaths climb. Germany and Spain are seeing cases rise, while vaccine distribution is faltering.
Here in the U.S. variants are growing, putting the country in a race against time to continuing vaccinating the population before the variants infect a large enough percent of the population to render the vaccines less effective. CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, called the months of March and April “a tipping point” to contain the coronavirus.
Chaffee County is not isolated from this danger. While the county is one of the most successful rural Colorado counties in vaccination rates so far, the South African variant has already been identified in the Buena Vista Corrections Complex.
Brazil is doing little better than Italy. In fact, it was only the end of last year, that Brazil declared it had reached ‘the tail end’ of one of the world’s worst outbreaks. Now, three months later, the country has lost almost 100,000 more lives and experts are warning it is entering a new, more deadly phase of the coronavirus. Bizarrely, the disease there is now hitting young adults with no previously-known underlying health conditions.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the leading U.S. expert on infectious diseases, is warning that March and April are critical months for the containment of COVID-19 here in the U.S. As many states rush to reopen, vaccination rates are not high enough yet to provide herd immunity to keep the virus from surging to create a fourth wave. If the experience of countries like Italy and Brazil are examples, another wave of the virus — this time from more dangerous variants — is not out of the question.
Featured image: Italians face another round of severe lockdowns as the country experiences a fourth wave of COVID-19, this one from COVID variants. Photo courtesy of CMS.
Recent Comments