Europe in full grip of a second wave

Across Europe, the United Kingdom and Ireland, the pandemic has clearly taken a step up in the last week and the situation is much worse than our 5 October blogpost here which predicted growing daily cases. And six weeks ago we reported early signs of a second wave in the blogpost here.

A closer look at Germany in the illustration below demonstrates the rapid shift in the pandemic. The Reff rate is around 2.5, but it has not been below Reff=1.0 since July. Click here to explore. Italy, the Benelux countries and the UK are in a similar predicament. France and Spain which previously had higher rates have declining Reff rates which may be a function of these two countries taking earlier steps to controlling the pandemic.