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Deadlier and faster-moving variants of the coronavirus have now taken hold in Europe, leading many countries to reintroduce lockdown measures. European markets are accordingly taking a hit.
Starting Friday, France sent 16 of its départements—with Paris accounting for eight—back into lockdown for at least four weeks. That means 21 million people once again cannot make nonessential trips out of their homes, though some restrictions are looser than they were for November’s lockdown.
Three-quarters of French COVID infections are now attributable to the U.K. variant (more properly known as B.1.1.7), which is both more transmissible and deadlier than the original strain. The development has laid waste to the government’s plan to ride out the rest of the pandemic without going back into lockdown.
“The epidemic is getting worse. Our responsibility now is to not let it escape our control,” Prime Minister Jean Castex said Thursday.
After the French regional lockdowns began Friday, Europe’s Stoxx 600 index slipped by 0.4%, with France’s CAC dropping 0.6%.
Sharp rise
Germany’s Robert Koch Institute (RKI) said Thursday that B.1.1.7 now accounted for 72% of German cases. Given that the disease-control institute had put the figure at 55% just last week, the speed of the variant’s spread is clear.
Worryingly, the RKI has estimated that by early April, this third wave will feature more infections than those seen at the crest of the second wave in December.
On Friday, German Health Minister Jens Spahn said the country would probably have to put the brakes on its tentative reopening plans. “We may even have to take steps backward,” he said.
The city-state of Berlin had already decided earlier this week to pause the lifting of lockdown measures, meaning no outdoor sports and no return to outdoor dining at restaurants. Several German states have already stopped the further opening of their schools.
Meanwhile, half of the regions in Italy—Europe’s worst hotspot at the moment—went deeper into lockdown at the start of this week. Again, in some regions people cannot leave their homes unless it is for essential work or health reasons. Over the Easter weekend, that will apply to the whole country.
Once again, Italy’s return to lockdown is partly due to the spread of B.1.1.7, which the health ministry says is prevalent in the country. (On Thursday it initiated a genomic-sequencing survey to get a clearer picture.)
The ministry also said there have been some small clusters in Italy of P.1, also known as the Brazil variant. This one is even more transmissible and has notably been killing many healthy young people in Brazil. The original variant did not hit younger people so hard.
Variant-vaccine race
Despite the appearance of the third wave, EU countries including Germany, France, and Italy at the start of this week paused their rollouts of AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine, due to reports of some recipients developing serious and sometimes fatal blood clots.
On Thursday the European Medicines Agency (EMA) said the vaccine was safe and effective and that its potential risks are far outweighed by its benefits. Even if there is a connection to be made between the jab and the clotting, which remains a possibility, only a few dozen people out of many millions have experienced the side effects.
The countries that paused AstraZeneca’s deployment are therefore now resuming it.
However, because of lower-than-hoped-for production yields, AstraZeneca’s deliveries to EU countries have fallen short this quarter and will probably miss the mark in Q2 as well. Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine has been approved, but the first consignments will only arrive in the second half of April.
On the plus side, deliveries of the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine will be higher in Q2 than had been previously planned, to the tune of 10 million doses—the total will be 200 million doses.
Nonetheless, the stakes of the vaccine-variant race have led many to look east for help—in particular, to Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, which the EMA is currently evaluating.
“We need to approve it quickly and efficiently, not get bogged down in the classic, bureaucratic details,” Bavarian State Premier Markus Söder said Thursday. “We need every vaccine we can get,” added Michael Müller, his Berlin counterpart.
