Germany is carrying out a large-scale investigation which suspects up to 30,000 people of pedophile activities on the Internet. It is one of the largest such cases in the country, while tougher sentences for perpetrators are under debate.
“I did not expect, even from afar, the extent of child abuse on the net”, was alarmed at a press conference Peter Biesenbach, Minister of Justice for the region of North Rhine-Westphalia (in the west of the country) where the scandal broke out last fall. The investigators were alerted by Canadian police officers who discovered child pornography content from this region. A 42-year-old man was arrested in Bergisch Gladbach, near Cologne, whose trial is scheduled to start in August. Large quantities of child pornography had been found in his apartment.
Following this arrest, the police uncovered the existence of various discussion groups with several thousand participants who are in the crosshairs of German justice. So far, at least 40 victims have been identified in the context of this case.
Out of anonymity all users of pedophile networks on the net
“We want to get out of the anonymity of the Internet the perpetrators who abuse children and those who support themsaid the Minister of Justice. Authors who communicate in the forums consider child abuse to be “normal” and find a large number of like-minded people. The inhibition thresholds drop. “ Peter Biesenbach added: “If we are to actively combat child abuse on the Internet, we must also talk about the legal regulations on data storage. One cannot work without the other ”.
Since the first arrest in Bergisch Gladbach in October 2019, more than 70 suspects have been identified across Germany. Several are currently on trial. Last May, a 27-year-old soldier was sentenced to ten years in prison and placed in a mental hospital. Thanks to the seizure of videos and photos in the man’s cellar, 11 other people were arrested in early June.
Towards tougher sentences
This investigation comes after several cases of pedophilia revealed in recent years and which have shocked the country. Yes “More and more cases of abuse are being revealed” in North Rhine-Westphalia, it is thanks to the increased investigation in the region, explains Michael Maatz, vice-president of a police union. “We must therefore expect that in the coming months, other networks of pedophiles will be exposed”, he warned.
→ PORTRAIT. Fabien Lefèvre, an educator against pedophile crime
The new revelations at the beginning of June on the disappearance 13 years ago in Portugal of the small British Maddie McCann, and the identification of a new suspect, in detention in Kiel (North), propelled in the public debate the need for increased severity against the perpetrators of pedophile crimes. Several political leaders are now demanding the lifting of anonymity for anyone distributing or receiving child pornography.
Angela Merkel confidently begins a historically difficult task in the final phase of her chancellorship. How can the European Union, deeply affected and weakened by the corona crisis, be helped to recover?
Germany will hold the rotating EU Presidency in the next six months. That places the Chancellor, even more than usual, at the center of European politics.
“Europe needs us,” she said recently without false modesty in the Bundestag. “As we need Europe.” The pandemic has, according to Merkel, “exposed how fragile the European project is.” The Union faces the greatest challenge of its existence, due to the corona crisis and the resulting economic downturn.
Merkel has been in power for almost fifteen years now. None of the European heads of government have been around for so long. Not only will her extensive experience as a crisis manager be tested in the coming months. She will also want to prove that she believes in the EU and that she is ready to devote political capital to holding and strengthening the EU together.
Until her own party, it has long been doubted whether she really had an eye for the European interest. “She’s destroying my Europe,” Helmut Kohl (Chancellor from 1982 to 1998) is said to have complained to friends in 2011.
But now Merkel – “as someone who lived the first 35 years of her life in the GDR” – says that Europe “fills me with great gratitude for its democratic promise of freedom and equality. And with the obligation to fully commit myself to this European promise. ” For someone who doesn’t really like big words, that’s almost a creed.
Her starting position for the next six months is strong. She is still the most valued politician in Germany – 71 percent of Germans are satisfied with her, according to a recent poll.
Its coalition government, initially made weak by a series of internal conflicts, has been moving with closed ranks since the beginning of the corona crisis. Its Christian Democrats are higher in the polls than they had been for years, and would get close to 40 percent of the vote.
Moreover, its European politics can count on particularly broad support in the German parliament. Euroscepticism, as so strongly represented in the Dutch parliament, is only played in the Bundestag by the radical right-wing AfD.
All this gives Merkel valuable backing for when Germany will soon have to compromise in Brussels and have to dig deep into its pockets.
Merkel with the Franse president Emmanuel Macron in 2017. Photo of Julien Warnand / EPA
Double task
The Federal Chancellor has set herself a double task for the European Presidency. Firstly, it wants to limit the impact of the corona crisis on public health and secondly, strongly promote economic recovery. With a view to the somewhat longer term, it wants to better equip the EU for a future in which Europe is more dependent on itself. The aim is to promote European sovereignty in a world increasingly dominated by the United States and China.
Two more major issues will be high on the European agenda in the coming months: the negotiations on the new EU budget and the settlement of Brexit. But Germany as EU president is not at the forefront of this.
European climate policy, digitization and relations with China will have to do with less attention than Berlin intended before the corona crisis broke out. The European Commission will launch a new initiative for migration policy in September.
In fact, the starting signal for the German Presidency, which officially starts on 1 July, echoed through Europe six weeks ago. On Monday, May 18, Merkel and French President Macron jointly presented their massive 500 billion euro recovery plan.
The plan was an important signal. Germany, which had always opposed the pooling of debt in the EU, now agreed that the Union would take on debt to finance the bailout plan. To keep the EU together, Merkel made a major political turn as a prelude to the six months in which she held the presidency.
In the meantime, the European Commission has put its own, even more extensive, plan on the table, which is now difficult to negotiate. The Netherlands, Austria, Denmark and Sweden have objected that aid for countries in great financial distress may be disbursed as gifts or grants, rather than as loans, which must be repaid.
In Germany there is much less political resistance to this. In the Bundestag, former SPD leader Martin Schulz, who was also president of the European Parliament, called the Netherlands and its supporters tauntly “wealth separatists”. Only the liberal FDP openly protested this misguided wording.
Merkel expressed himself more diplomatically this weekend. “I expect each of us to put ourselves in the situation of the others and look at the problems from their perspective,” she said in an interview with the Southgerman newspaper and some other European newspapers. For countries that already have a lot of debt, extra loans are less useful than subsidies. I am working to convince those countries that have agreed to loans so far, but reject subsidies. ”
Merkel with then-Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker (links), EU Commissioner Frans Timmermans (rear) and then President of the European Council Donald Tusk (right) in 2015. Photo Olivier Hoslet / EPA
Geopolitical background
The fact that Merkel suddenly no longer keeps his hand on the pulse has both an economic and a geopolitical background. As the largest and strongest economy in Europe, Germany has relatively good maps compared to many southern countries to overcome the crisis. At home, the Merkel government has already earmarked hundreds of billions to get the economy going again, keep businesses running or even partially nationalize them.
Poorer EU Member States have far fewer financial options. If they do not receive aid, not only will an important outlet for Germany threaten to shrink, but the gap between poor and rich countries in the EU will then widen further than it already is.
This could dangerously disrupt the balance of power in the EU, the political class in Germany realizes. If the big, rich country in the middle of Europe becomes even stronger while other countries are left behind, it can easily fuel the aversion to and fear of yet another strikingly dominant Germany.
“We should not allow the pandemic to disperse the economic prospects of the Member States, thereby weakening the common internal market, a core element of Europe,” Merkel said earlier this month. In other words, it is a well-understood German self-interest to ensure that the balance in Europe is not further disrupted.
It is still unclear whether Merkel will also work hard on the intention to redesign the Union. Macron has been waiting in vain for German willingness to cooperate with his reform plans for almost three years.
The coalition agreement of the current (fourth) Merkel cabinet, of the CDU / CSU and SPD, initially seemed to be a sign that Berlin wanted to accept the outstretched hand of Paris. “A new beginning for Europe”, is its ambitious title. Those words did not lead to many concrete new steps – until Merkel and Macron presented their recovery plan.
Suddenly, German politicians, including Finance Minister Olaf Scholz (SPD), believed that a step had finally been taken towards a true political union and a United States of Europe. Merkel himself does not use the latter term. She advocates caution in this matter, saying that in the current crisis, there is no time to make treaty changes.
Merkel often emphasizes that European countries must cooperate much more closely, for example in foreign policy and defense. However, the Presidency will last only six months, and in that short period, Germany will at most be able to initiate new discussions in this sensitive area.
The experienced politician Alexander Lambsdorff of the liberal FDP, sister party of the VVD and D66 in Europe, does not expect Merkel to come up with, or even with a vision, great impetus for reform and further integration of the EU. “She never did that. She has always been a crisis manager, never a Helmut Kohl. That will not change anymore. ”
Correction (June 29, 2020): An earlier version of this article stated that Germany will chair the European Council. That should be: President of the Council of the European Union, or more briefly: EU President. That has been adjusted above.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC Handelsblad on June 29, 2020
A version of this article also appeared in June 29, 2020, in nrc.next
The work in the slaughterhouse is exhausting, the assembly lines run quickly: meat supply center in Mannheim. Image: ddp Images
Harassment in the slaughterhouse: A Romanian contract worker tells of exploitation in the meat industry, the terror of the foremen and the fear of his colleagues. He still likes his job.
JI get up every night at half past eleven. I go to work at one, stand at the assembly line at two, then my shift begins. Before the pandemic there was less to do, sometimes I only worked six, seven or eight hours, six days a week, Monday to Saturday. Since entire slaughterhouses have been closed, we have been working regularly for nine and a half hours. Recently we have even been forced to work on Sundays. This means that you have almost no time with the family at all.
This week the managing directors of the general contractor came down to us in production and introduced new regulations. A distance of one and a half meters must now be maintained between the employees on the line. But until a few days ago we worked very closely together. In addition, the belt no longer runs as fast as usual. Usually we have to work at a speed that costs a lot of power. Now you can work very loosely and slowly and you don’t have the stress that you cannot do it because the tape is just too fast.
32, 21, 41, 24, 30. The health authorities in Hesse reported so many new infections to the Robert Koch Institute on the days since June 24th. And overnight on Monday? There is only one new confirmed Covid 19 case. How can that be? Is there a case of late reporting because offices did not inform the RKI named institute in Berlin in good time until midnight? The explanation is there.
Thorsten Winter
Business editor and internet coordinator in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.
In any case, one contrasts pleasantly not only with the series of numbers mentioned. The RKI has just announced 262 new infections for the whole of Germany. He does not even have fresh data from Baden-Württemberg, Bremen, Saxony and Thuringia. In fact, there could be more new Covid 19 cases than reported in the morning.
The news of the deaths related to the pandemic is also encouraging: there is no new news. So it remains with the previously officially registered 506 Corona victims since the beginning of March. Since then, 10,762 people in Hesse have been infected with the Covid 19 virus. A good 9900 are now considered to have recovered.
Frankfurt reported the most infections, in 1769 in number. Few of them are on Vogelsberg. Only 121 are known there. The situation is similarly good only in the Waldeck-Frankenberg district and in Offenbach, where less than 200 infections have also been registered. In contrast, the district of Hersfeld-Rotenburg has almost 300 (as of Sunday). This is also related to dozens of infections among employees of the mail order company Amazon in Bad Hersfeld. On the other hand, the districts of Lahn-Dill, Limburg-Weilburg, Odenwald and Vogelsberg have been without a new case for seven days, according to the Ministry of Social Affairs on Sunday.
With regard to the number of people who have recovered, the following restriction must always be observed: As the RKI responsible for disease control in Germany informed the FAZ, it does not officially collect data on the number of people who have recovered. The survey was also not provided for by law. “However, at least in the cases in which most of the information was ascertained, which had no severe symptoms and were not admitted to a hospital, it can be assumed that they will have recovered after 14 days at the latest,” says Berlin on Seat of the institute. The RKI only estimates the number of those recovered.
The RKI takes into account those cases that were transmitted at midnight on the respective day. “For the presentation of the newly transmitted cases per day, the reporting date is used – the date on which the local health authority became aware of the case and recorded it electronically,” says the website of the institute. It could take a few days between the notification by the doctors and laboratories to the health authority and the transmission of the cases to the responsible state authorities and the RKI. In such cases there is talk of late reporting.
The work in the slaughterhouse is exhausting, the assembly lines run quickly: meat supply center in Mannheim. Image: ddp Images
A Romanian contract worker tells of exploitation in the meat industry, the terror of the foremen and the fear of his colleagues. He still likes his job.
JI get up every night at half past eleven. I go to work at one, stand at the assembly line at two, then my shift begins. Before the pandemic there was less to do, sometimes I only worked six, seven or eight hours, six days a week, Monday to Saturday. Since entire slaughterhouses have been closed, we have been working regularly for nine and a half hours. Recently we have even been forced to work on Sundays. This means that you have almost no time with the family at all.
This week the managing directors of the general contractor came down to us in production and introduced new regulations. A distance of one and a half meters must now be maintained between the employees on the line. But until a few days ago we worked very closely together. In addition, the belt no longer runs as fast as usual. Usually we have to work at a speed that costs a lot of power. Now you can work very loosely and slowly and you don’t have the stress that you cannot do it because the tape is just too fast.
About 1.5 thousand people were infected with coronavirus in a meat processing plant owned by Tonnis. After that, the plant was closed. Bloomberg calls it Germany’s largest local COVID-19 outbreak
Klemens Tennis
(1: Maja Hitij / Bongarts / Getty Images)
German politicians and the prosecutor’s office began testing against Clemens Tönnis after 1.5 thousand people became infected with coronavirus at his meat processing plant in Rheda-Wiedenbrück (federal state North Westafalia in Germany), reports Bloomberg. The publication WirtschaftsWoche back in 2015 due to the type of activity of Tönnis gave him the nickname “sausage king”.
The agency notes that the majority of cases of COVID-19 are workers from Eastern Europe. After information was received about infected people, the authorities decided to close the plant. Bloomberg calls the situation at the Tonnis facility the largest local outbreak of coronavirus infection in Germany.
The publication also reported that after the outbreak of infection at the plant in German political circles, they discussed the possibility of accelerating legislative changes that improve working conditions and the level of hygiene in enterprises. Some politicians are also considering asking Tennis to take on some of the costs that the country incurs due to the pandemic.
WHO warned of a new wave of coronavirus incidence in Europe
Der Spiegel talked to one of the factory workers named George. According to him, in the past few weeks, a device for measuring temperature has been installed at the entrance to the enterprise. However, measures to identify cases were taken too late, the man said. In addition, George said that there was no person at the entrance who would service the device, so the workers “just ran past.”
Moscow does not want to lose Minsk either economically or politically, as this will cause a “severe blow” to Russia’s domestic policy. This was announced at a meeting with representatives of the Minsk region by President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko, fragments of his speech were shown by the Belarus 1 television channel.
“The only ally that remained with Russia is Belarus,” he said.
“I often [президенту России Владимиру] I’m saying this to Putin: I understand you, you cannot lose Belarus. I understand that you cannot fight to save Belarus, either, ”the Belarusian leader continued, adding that Russia was being“ pushed out of very marginal markets ”: the European Union and Ukraine.
According to Lukashenko, Belarus is the second largest consumer of Russian gas after Germany, and also buys a huge amount of Russian oil.
MThe pronunciation is failing. But hardly any German escapes the issue of tonnies and the situation in Gütersloh these days in Spain. Many Spaniards are concerned about the latest Corona outbreak, of all places, in the country that they see as a role model in the fight against the pandemic: if Germany fails in the end to stop the virus, how should Spain with its more than Make 28,000 dead? The fear of a second wave is great. Spain – unlike the neighboring country Portugal – only records smaller foci of infection. For the first time since the outbreak of the pandemic in Madrid, there has not been a single new death within a day on Saturday – the capital, with more than 8,400 deaths and almost 72,000 infections so far, is the most severely affected region in the country by Corona.
However, caution is great. You can already see this on a Sunday walk in the Retiro Park. Most people there voluntarily wear face masks. About one in three even puts on the particularly dense and sweaty FFP2 masks despite the summer temperatures of more than 30 degrees. In Spain, the mask requirement only applies to buses, trains and in places where the minimum distance cannot be maintained.
“Society would understand restrictive measures much better,” says Catalan epidemiologist Antoni Trilla about the virus. Unlike in Germany, where exit restrictions were criticized as “deprivation of liberty”, 88 percent of Spaniards in the latest survey by the state CIS institute showed understanding of the much more drastic restrictions that applied in their country for several months.
Suspicion and caution continue to dominate even after the alarm condition has ended a week ago. “I’m not going on vacation in my apartment in Benidorm this year,” says a kiosk owner in Retiro Park. The images of crowded British beaches have contributed to this. “I don’t trust British tourists,” says the Spaniard, who doesn’t believe that the guests in the seaside resort near Alicante will behave more responsibly. According to the CIS survey, just over a quarter of all Spaniards want to go on vacation this summer. If so, they would prefer to drive their own car to their second home on the coast. A flight trip scares the vast majority – whether on one of the islands or abroad.
There is an unusually large amount of space on the beaches
In the Balearic and Canary Islands, there could therefore be a lot of space for foreign tourists who are slowly returning. Hoteliers and restaurant owners are eagerly awaiting them, while not only the state emergency coordinator Fernando Simón warns against the “import” of new infections: for fear of having to be quarantined during their vacation, they could refrain from seeing a doctor if they have symptoms of corona. The conservative People’s Party (PP) ruling in the capital region is committed to making a negative PCR test a requirement for entry into Spain. At Madrid’s Barajas Airport, the PP considers this to be essential, because it is the gateway to Europe for many people from Latin America, where the virus is still raging.
This Monday, the first major test of the Spanish warning app starts on the small island of La Gomera. It is supposed to work in a similar way to the application in Germany: users receive a warning if an infected person was nearby. So far, there are only apps in Spain that can be used to book a place on the beach. In the next few days, the virus on the island, which has actually been free of corona for more than two months, will have 300 “virtually” infected people with the help of which a new outbreak will be simulated. However, the Spanish government expects that the new app will only be available across the country after the summer season in autumn. That would be in time for the high season in the Canaries.
In the Balearic Islands, it should normally be in full swing long ago. But there is an unusually large amount of space on the beaches, the majority of the hotels are still closed. Even the regular guests from Germany seem to take their time. Almost 11,000 German holidaymakers could have preferred to travel to the islands for two weeks as part of a pilot project since June 15. But by June 24, just over 2,200 Germans had arrived, as the representative of the Spanish central government said in the Balearic Islands. The Spanish borders have been open again for a week now. Nevertheless, there are still restrictions that will also be felt in Palma de Mallorca. According to the latest gazette, the government will continue to prohibit cruise ships from landing. Only after the end of the Corona crisis should they be allowed to moor again in Palma and other Spanish ports.
European epidemiologists warn which countries should start preparing for a second wave of covid-19.
The covid-19 outbreak is far from over. The World Health Organization (WHO) points out that it is not long before the 10 million infected people are reached worldwide and there are even countries where the rate of new cases has increased again in recent weeks as restrictions are being lifted. One of the most worrying cases is Germany, but the country.
The second wave of SARS-CoV-2 has been mentioned even before most European countries have reached the peak of the outbreak internally, but no one has ever been able to predict when it would arrive, with the most consensus opinion that it should arrive after summer. But now there are those who say that this second wave may come during the summer months.
The scientific community defines the “wave” – albeit informally – in comparison with the waves of the sea. If the natural waves are counted from the moment the descent of water is replaced by a sudden flood. In the case of viruses, the end of the first “wave” is counted when a peak is reached and then it moves to a situation in which the pandemic is minimally controlled. When there is a systematic increase in cases again, the second wave is mentioned.
Even with a few hundred cases appearing every day in Portugal, a second wave could be talked about, according to researchers from the National Institute of Health Ricardo Jorge. “Since the first Covid-19 case notified in Portugal, the country remains in an epidemic situation”, however, in the region of Lisbon and Vale do Tejo (LVT) “the trend and the magnitude of the values of the epidemic curve do not allow us exclude – or conclude unequivocally – from a second phase of growth “, the researchers told Lusa.
The researchers say that the containment measures adopted led to a reduction in the rate of transmission of the infection in the community, but did not eliminate the circulation of the virus, allowing “flattening of the epidemic curve”, which is consistent with the continuous occurrence of new cases of disease over time. Hence it is not yet possible to speak of a new wave in Lisbon, but rather the continuation of the first wave of cases. The truth is that Portugal has had more than 700 cases per day (it had up to one day with almost 1,500 new infections) and currently it has been normally above 350, but below 400, with some variations.
However, there are countries that have had the outbreak under control and are now grappling with a large increase in cases. Iran, for example, which lifted restrictions in April, returned to around 3,000 cases a day in the past month after reaching less than 1,000 a day.
Germany is also preparing for a possible second wave after an outbreak in a slaughterhouse in the town of Gütersloh, which has been in confinement since Tuesday. The company had more than 1,500 positive cases of covid-19. However, the German government says it is acting quickly to control the outbreak and this Friday the number of new cases has decreased again, as well as the rate of contagion which stands at 0.59, after having been above 1 , 01 this week. Portugal and Switzerland also have an index above 1.0. But in Germany, new cases increased by 36.7%, while in Switzerland, they were 15.1% compared to the previous week.
The difference is that Portugal has already announced new restrictive measures (mainly in the Greater Lisbon region, where a new outbreak has been reported) and these two other European countries are resisting this decision, trying to control the outbreak without resorting to general confinement.
Maurizio Cecconi, a doctor at the Humanitas University Hospital in Milan, Italy, told the Euronews: “We are ready for second wave patients. What happened at the beginning of the epidemic is that we were taken by surprise”.
In an open letter published in the British Medical Journal, British experts alerted the government of that country to the evidence that indicates that local outbreaks are increasingly likely and a second wave a real risk “.
Jozef Kesecioglu, president of the European Society for Intensive Care Medicine, believes that the second wave is not as serious as the first and says that there is a plan, both at the level of national governments, local governments and hospitals for extra beds .
INSA researchers say that the likelihood of new epidemic waves may be influenced by external factors that favor the spread of the virus, or by the occurrence of genetic changes in the virus that increase its transmission capacity in the human population. “For example, other respiratory viruses, such as the flu virus, circulate with epidemic expression in the autumn and winter months, but it is not yet known whether this will be the case for SARS-CoV-2”, they add.
The researchers conclude that “the criteria for defining a second Covid-19 epidemic wave are not yet consensual in the world, which increases the complexity of interpreting epidemiological data and indicators, compounded by the effects of human intervention on the natural history of the disease. “.
European epidemiologists warn which countries should start preparing for a second wave of covid-19.
The covid-19 outbreak is far from over. The World Health Organization (WHO) points out that it is not long before the 10 million infected people are reached worldwide and there are even countries where the rate of new cases has increased again in recent weeks as restrictions are being lifted. One of the most worrying cases is Germany, but the country.
The second wave of SARS-CoV-2 has been mentioned even before most European countries have reached the peak of the outbreak internally, but no one has ever been able to predict when it would arrive, with the most consensus opinion that it should arrive after summer. But now there are those who say that this second wave may come during the summer months.
The scientific community defines the “wave” – albeit informally – in comparison with the waves of the sea. If the natural waves are counted from the moment the descent of water is replaced by a sudden flood. In the case of viruses, the end of the first “wave” is counted when a peak is reached and then it moves to a situation in which the pandemic is minimally controlled. When there is a systematic increase in cases again, the second wave is mentioned.
Even with a few hundred cases appearing every day in Portugal, a second wave could be talked about, according to researchers from the National Institute of Health Ricardo Jorge. “Since the first Covid-19 case notified in Portugal, the country remains in an epidemic situation”, however, in the region of Lisbon and Vale do Tejo (LVT) “the trend and the magnitude of the values of the epidemic curve do not allow us exclude – or conclude unequivocally – from a second phase of growth “, the researchers told Lusa.
The researchers say that the containment measures adopted led to a reduction in the rate of transmission of the infection in the community, but did not eliminate the circulation of the virus, allowing “flattening of the epidemic curve”, which is consistent with the continuous occurrence of new cases of disease over time. Hence it is not yet possible to speak of a new wave in Lisbon, but rather the continuation of the first wave of cases. The truth is that Portugal has had more than 700 cases per day (it had up to one day with almost 1,500 new infections) and currently it has been normally above 350, but below 400, with some variations.
However, there are countries that have had the outbreak under control and are now grappling with a large increase in cases. Iran, for example, which lifted restrictions in April, returned to around 3,000 cases a day in the past month after reaching less than 1,000 a day.
Germany is also preparing for a possible second wave after an outbreak in a slaughterhouse in the town of Gütersloh, which has been in confinement since Tuesday. The company had more than 1,500 positive cases of covid-19. However, the German government says it is acting quickly to control the outbreak and this Friday the number of new cases has decreased again, as well as the rate of contagion which stands at 0.59, after having been above 1 , 01 this week. Portugal and Switzerland also have an index above 1.0. But in Germany, new cases increased by 36.7%, while in Switzerland, they were 15.1% compared to the previous week.
The difference is that Portugal has already announced new restrictive measures (mainly in the Greater Lisbon region, where a new outbreak has been reported) and these two other European countries are resisting this decision, trying to control the outbreak without resorting to general confinement.
Maurizio Cecconi, a doctor at the Humanitas University Hospital in Milan, Italy, told the Euronews: “We are ready for second wave patients. What happened at the beginning of the epidemic is that we were taken by surprise”.
In an open letter published in the British Medical Journal, British experts alerted the government of that country to the evidence that indicates that local outbreaks are increasingly likely and a second wave a real risk “.
Jozef Kesecioglu, president of the European Society for Intensive Care Medicine, believes that the second wave is not as serious as the first and says that there is a plan, both at the level of national governments, local governments and hospitals for extra beds .
INSA researchers say that the likelihood of new epidemic waves may be influenced by external factors that favor the spread of the virus, or by the occurrence of genetic changes in the virus that increase its transmission capacity in the human population. “For example, other respiratory viruses, such as the flu virus, circulate with epidemic expression in the autumn and winter months, but it is not yet known whether this will be the case for SARS-CoV-2”, they add.
The researchers conclude that “the criteria for defining a second Covid-19 epidemic wave are not yet consensual in the world, which increases the complexity of interpreting epidemiological data and indicators, compounded by the effects of human intervention on the natural history of the disease. “.
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