Europe's second wave gets worse

A quick scan of the CloseAssociate modeller on 25 October here shows that in the last two weeks European reproduction numbers and daily case numbers are growing alarmingly. The second wave of infection across European States is a lot worse than during the Northern Hemisphere spring and summer.

In Germany in April the peak daily cases was a bit less than 7,000. In this wave, a couple of days ago they topped 12,000 daily cases. With an Reff=1.8 reproduction rate worse is in store for Germany. See the latest calculation here.

France's Reff=1.4 and its daily case numbers are consistently above 40,000 and on 19 October it reported 75,000 new daily cases (We assume Monday reporting includes weekend test results). France's Reff has been persistently above 1.0 since June and so, like Germany, worse is in store. See the latest calculation here.

The UK has a similar Reff=1.4 as France and it has been above 1.0 since early July. The UK daily case numbers are above 21,000 and a few days previously it reported 26,000 cases. Its reproduction number appears to be trending back closer to 1.0 as, possibly, new social distancing measures reduce spread. However with Reff=1.4 we can expect daily cases to grow in the next couple of weeks at least. See the latest calculation here.

Italy's has Reff>2.5. Its reproduction rates for the disease have been climbing steeply since late September and have been above 1.0 since early July. At the time of the tragic images of overwhelmed hospitals in Northern Italy in late March the country had peak cases of 6,500 per day. Today, daily case numbers are above 16,000. With a high current reproduction number we can expect it to get worse. See the latest calculation here.