3 October 2020 | New Scientist | 7IN EUROPE, the long-predicted
second wave of the coronavirus
pandemic is now well under way.
“In some member states, the
situation is now even worse than
in the peak during March,” said
Stella Kyriakides, the European
Union’s commissioner for health
and food safety, on 24 September.
“This is a real cause for concern.”
Spain, the Czech Republic,
France, the Netherlands and the
UK are reporting higher numbers
of daily confirmed cases per
million people than they did
in March, with around 240 per
million in Spain. Portugal has
the next highest infection rate,
but hasn’t yet exceeded earlier
peak levels.
However, during the first
wave, testing was mostly limited
to those in hospitals, meaning
many cases were missed.Antibody surveys, which estimate
the proportion of people who have
had the SARS-CoV-2 virus, show
that the actual number of cases
at the time was much higher
than official figures suggest.
“There is undoubtedly more
testing being done now than
in February and March,” says
Martin Hibberd at the London
School of Hygiene & Tropical
Medicine. “The numbers are
difficult to compare.”
The figures should serve as
a wake-up call, said Hans Kluge,
the World Health Organization’s
regional director for Europe,
on 17 September. “Although
these numbers reflect more
comprehensive testing,it also shows alarming rates of
transmission across the region.”
“Obviously, if you don’t search,
you don’t find,” says Giulia
Giordano at the University of
Trento in Italy. “However, this does
not necessarily mean that now we
are discovering more infection
cases because we are testing more.
The cases may really be more.”
One indicator of how many
cases are being missed is the
proportion of positive tests,
she says. This is rising in most
European countries, but isn’t
yet as high as it was in March.
In Spain, for instance, a third of
tests were positive in March. By
June, this had fallen to one in 100,
but it has now risen to one in 10.Daily covid-19 cases are rising across Europe, but is that just because
countries are performing more tests? Michael Le Page investigatesEurope braces again
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newscientist.com/coronavirus-latestIn the UK, it is up to two in 100.
If actual case numbers aren’t
yet as high as they were in March,
this would help explain why the
numbers of hospitalisations and
deaths have remained low even as
case numbers have soared. Spain
is reporting around two deaths per
day per million people, compared
with 18 per day per million during
the peak of the first wave.Another reason could be that
younger people returning to
work and education are the ones
being infected while older, more
vulnerable people continue to
shield. “We do not yet know
how impactful the current set
of measures will be in reducing
SARS-CoV-2 transmission to
vulnerable groups,” says Hibberd.
“However, with case numbers still
rapidly rising, it seems unlikely
that they will be sufficient
to prevent later increases in
hospitalisations and deaths.”
Death rates also lag several
weeks behind infections. Yet the
number of deaths among those
infected – the infection fatality
rate – is expected to be lower
during the second wave. “This
would mean we won’t see the
same impact even if cases did
soar,” says Jason Oke at the
University of Oxford.
There are many reasons for
this. Medical staff have more
experience with the disease, for
instance, and treatments such
as dexamethasone have been
shown to reduce the death rate.
The rising case numbers
indicate either that people
aren’t following the measures
meant to prevent the spread
of the coronavirus or that those
measures are insufficient, the
European Centre for Disease
Prevention and Control said
in its latest summary. ❚Street art on a wall
at the Saint-Antoine
Hospital in Paris, France“ There is undoubtedly
more testing being
done now than in
February and March”Second wave