FRANCE and Germany moved yesterday towards shutting down sectors of their economies as part of accelerating efforts worldwide to check a resurgent coronavirus and still limit the financial fallout.

Hundreds of thousands of new infections took the known global caseload past 44.5 million with nearly 1.2 million deaths, as the disease continues its deadly spread worldwide. 

India, one of the world’s worst-hit nations, surpassed eight million cases with fears of worse days ahead as the religious festival of Deepavali draws near.

Following significantly relaxed summer seasons, France and Germany are now taking bold steps to shut down social life in the face of spiking infections across the continent.

Starting today, France, whose death toll yesterday surpassed 36,000 after 250 more fatalities since Wednesday, will bar people from leaving their homes without authorisation, recalling the drastic stay-at-home measures seen around the world in early spring.

Bars and restaurants will also be closed until at least December and travel between regions will be limited, President Emmanuel Macron said in a televised address on Wednesday.

“As elsewhere in Europe, we are overwhelmed by a second wave that will probably be more difficult and deadly than the first,” Macron said, though he assured that this lockdown would be less severe. 

Factories and building sites will remain open, as will creches and schools – although children as young as six will be required to wear masks.

In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel has ordered a lighter round of shutdowns from Monday, November 2, until the end of the month.

Germans will not be confined to their homes but bars, cafés and restaurants must close, as well as theatres, operas and cinemas.

In Spain, the parliament yesterday approved the extension for six months of a state of emergency that Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s leftist government declared on Sunday for an initial two weeks. 

This means Spain’s 17 regional governments can impose measures to restrict people’s mobility, such as night-time curfews and closing their borders.

The Greek port city Thessaloniki yesterday was declared a “red zone” facing shutdown of many activities.

Authorities in Sweden are now recommending residents of the capital Stockholm as well as those of two southern regions to limit contacts with people and avoid enclosed spaces as the country registered an official record of 3,254 new cases in one day.

EU leaders held a video summit Thursday on the crisis, according to European sources the first in a series of such calls to improve coordination across the continent.

The European Central Bank meanwhile pledged to bolster its pandemic stimulus in December.

The economic recovery is “losing momentum more rapidly than expected” after the partial rebound seen in the summer, ECB president Christine Lagarde said after a virtual meeting of the 25-member governing council.

Despite mounting cases and deaths, the UK has vowed to persist with its localised approach instead of a nationwide lockdown.

Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick conceded statistics showed Britain was in a “bad place”, with nearly 25,000 new cases registered on Wednesday.

But he indicated that ministers still believed targeted action was “the best way forward” given varying rates of infection.

Russian President Vladimir Putin meanwhile said he had no plans to introduce a sweeping lockdown, even as the country saw record tolls with reports of ambulance queues at hospitals and medical shortages. 

Also yesterday, Algeria’s President Abdelmadjid Tebboune underwent medical tests in a German hospital and is in a stable condition, officials said, days after suspected coronavirus cases were reported among the 74-year-old’s aides. – AFP, October 30, 2020.