Belgium has ordered non-essential shops and businesses offering personal services like hair salons to close from tomorrow until the middle of December, with the latest coronavirus figures showing the country has the highest infection rate in Europe.
Similar restrictions have been reintroduced in France and Germany.
New Belgian measures are that any gatherings in public spaces must be limited to a maximum of four people, and supermarkets can only sell essential goods. Households are allowed just one visitor. The existing night-time curfew measures and closures of bars and restaurants will remain in place.
Autumn school holidays have also been extended until 15 November.
The BBC reports that Belgium, which suffered one of the highest death rates in the world during the first wave of the pandemic in the northern spring, now has the highest infection rate in Europe, with more than half of the 2 000 beds in its intensive care units already occupied by Covid-19 patients.
Prime Minister Alexander de Croo said the country ‘finds itself in a health emergency’.
In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson is understood to be considering a month-long lockdown across England in the hope that measures could be eased before Christmas, the BBC reports.
It says it has seen reports suggesting that the UK is on course for a much higher death toll than during the first wave unless further restrictions are introduced. Deaths could reach more than 4 000 a day, one of the models suggests. This figure is based on no policies being brought in to slow the spread of the disease. At the height of the pandemic during the spring, deaths in the UK reached more than 1 000 a day.
The Financial Times reports that Covid-19 cases in the United States increased by 97 000 on Friday, by far the largest one-day jump since the start of the pandemic, with Midwestern states leading a wave of infections, hospitalisations and deaths across the country just days before the presidential election.
It said Friday’s increase was led by the big industrial states of the Midwest, many of which are key battlegrounds for Tuesday’s election. Illinois and Ohio set single-day records with 6 943 and 3 845, respectively. Wisconsin had 5 096 new confirmed cases, its second-highest daily increase, according to the state health department.
[Picture: Roxane Roth on Unsplash]