European Governments Opt to Accept COVID-19 as 'New Normal'

Rabat – COVID-19 fatigue and economics appear to be pushing Europe to consider COVID-19 as a new normal, opting for treatment over containment. Decision-makers in Europe are increasingly treating COVID-19 as an endemic disease that citizens need to learn to live with.

Earlier goals of eliminating the virus appear to have been abandoned as fragile economies and a restless public demand a return to normal life despite the raging new surge of infections.

Europe’s high vaccination rate has broken the grim trend of COVID-19 related deaths surging alongside new daily cases. Despite record numbers of infections, the number of related deaths has remained relatively stable. While vaccinations have been unable to effectively halt infections, they appear to be effective at reducing the death toll caused by the variants that are currently in circulation.

And so despite a COVID-19 surge that has infected over 9 million Europeans in the past week, governments are considering easing restrictions and planning a new normal where COVID-19 is treated in a similar way to the flu and other endemic diseases.

Britain, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Spain are all attempting to lift restrictions even as they report record numbers of infections as part of the largest global surge of COVID-19 since the emergence of the virus.

This approach however appears to be the prioritization of economic priorities and populists demands over the scientific consensus, many experts warn. The WHO has warned that the pandemic is “nowhere near finished,” arguing that underestimating the virus could lead to new, more dangerous, variants as well as a potentially disastrous impact on countries with low vaccination rates.

New daily cases of COVID-19 infections have never been as high as amid the current wave. Source: WHO.

The WHO’s Maria van Kerkhove emphasized that “we’re hearing a lot of people suggest that omicron is the last variant, that it’s over after this and that is not the case because this virus is circulating at a very intense level around the world.”

Van Kerkhove, who spoke at the WHO’s weekly COVID-19 briefing on January 18, highlighted that “there’s another 20% increase in cases in the last seven days with almost 19 million cases that have been reported to us and again that’s a true underestimate of what is actually circulating around.”

For governments around the world, the virus appears to have produced two difficult choices. A country can either attempt to return to a “new normal” and accept new infections, or take China’s “zero-covid” approach that sacrifices economic performance to root out every remaining case of the virus.

With most countries facing economic difficulties after nearly two years of crisis, European lawmakers appear to have chosen to attempt to live with the virus, and hope that new variants won’t spoil an economic recovery in the short-term.