Strategies for exiting spring lockdowns did not work, and goodwill leached away, allowing infection rates to rise
Last week Europe registered 1.5m new cases of Covid-19 – a record – making it once again the centre of the pandemic. The UK is not exempt, and England will enter a new lockdown from Thursday 5 November. From the outside, it might seem the continent is in the grip of a second wave that is ramping rapidly towards its peak. But it is not one wave, it’s many local waves, and that is crucial in understanding how to rein it in and prevent the same thing happening again.
Though there is some tentative evidence that the virus itself has undergone a change since the summer, there is none to suggest that this change has affected either the transmissibility or the severity of the disease. Nor can the change explain the synchronous surges in all parts of the continent.
