Based on a 7-day average, Europe recorded 78,000 cases a day, which represents about 152 cases for every 1 million residents. During the same time, the U.S. recorded 49,000 daily cases, or about 150 per 1 million residents.

“It does seem like we are at a tipping point in terms of infection numbers,” Flavio Toxvaerd, an infectious disease economics expert at the University of Cambridge, told the newspaper.

The surge looks similar to what the U.S. faced in June as cases peaked in states in the South and West, the newspaper reported. Europe last reported more cases in the U.S. in the spring when countries were first developing their coronavirus responses and testing strategies. Europe’s test positivity rate is increasing as well, which indicates that the virus is spreading even as testing has increased.

“What all countries are trying to do now, the ones that are in trouble, is buy time to try to survive the winter,” Linda Bauld, a public health professor at the University of Edinburgh, told the Wall Street Journal.

“That means getting the case numbers down from the level they are now to allow their systems to be able to function,” she said.

The increase in cases is beginning to lead to an increase in hospital admissions, the newspaper reported. In 19 countries in Europe, the number of hospitalized patients in early October has reached about one-fourth of the number seen in April. At the moment, health officials are detecting cases earlier than before and can provide treatment sooner, and hospitals are better trained to handle COVID-19 patients.

The regional approach is meant to “seize this moment now to avoid the misery of a national lockdown,” Boris Johnson, prime minister of the UK, said during his announcement.

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Germany coronavirus: Record rise prompts warning of 100,000 deaths

By Jenny Hill
BBC News Leipzig, Germany

“We have to act right now,” said Christian Drosten, who described a real emergency situation.

Doctors in the intensive care Covid ward at Leipzig University Hospital warn this fourth wave could be the worst yet.

One patient here, a woman in her 20s, has just given birth. Her baby is fine, but staff say they don’t know whether she’ll survive.

This state of Saxony has the highest seven-day infection rate in Germany at 459 cases per 100,000 people. The national rate is 232.

It also has the lowest take-up of vaccine: 57% of the population here have been immunised.

There are 18 patients on the Covid ward. Just four were vaccinated.

“It’s very difficult to get staff motivated to treat patients now in this fourth wave,” says Prof Sebastian Stehr, who heads the department. “A large part of the population still underestimates the problem.”

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 Here’s what you need to know about the coronavirus right now:

Fewer than 1 mln U.S. kids get COVID-19 shot in first eligible week, White House says

More than 900,000 U.S. children aged 5 to 11 are expected to have received their first COVID-19 shot by the end of Wednesday, the White House said, as the government ramped up vaccinations of younger children. The United States began administering Pfizer/BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine to children ages 5 to 11 on Nov. 3.

The seven-day average of total COVID-19 cases in the United States was flat at about 73,300 over the past week, CDC Director Dr Rochelle Walensky said during the briefing, with the hospitalization rate also flat at 5,000 a day. The U.S. seven-day average of daily deaths fell 11% to about 1,000 per day. read more

France experiencing start of fifth wave of COVID epidemic

France is at the beginning of a fifth wave of the coronavirus epidemic, Health Minister Olivier Veran said on Wednesday as his ministry registered 11,883 new cases, the second day in a row with a new case tally over 10,000. New cases have seen double-digit percentage increases week-on-week since around mid-October.

“Several neighbouring countries are already in a fifth wave of the COVID epidemic, what we are experiencing in France clearly looks like the beginning of a fifth wave,” Veran said on TF1 television, adding the circulation of the virus was accelerating. read more

Moderna COVID-19 vaccine patent dispute headed to court, U.S. NIH head says

U.S. National Institutes of Health scientists played “a major role” in developing Moderna Inc’s COVID-19 vaccine and the agency intends to defend its claim as co-owner of patents on the shot, NIH Director Dr Francis Collins told Reuters on Wednesday.

In a story first reported by the New York Times on Tuesday, Moderna excluded three NIH scientists as co-inventors of a central patent for the company’s multibillion-dollar COVID-19 vaccine in its application filed in July.

Moderna, in a statement emailed to Reuters, acknowledged that scientists at NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) played a “substantial role” in developing Moderna’s messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine, but the company said it disagrees with the agency’s patent claims. read more

U.S. brokers J&J-COVAX deal to send vaccines to conflict zones, Blinken says

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday the United States has brokered a deal between Johnson & Johnson and the COVAX vaccine-sharing program for the delivery of the company’s COVID-19 vaccine to people living in conflict zones.

A senior administration official said the deal means doses of J&J’s vaccine can be distributed in conflict zones and other humanitarian settings by organizations other than governments, which have in the past been restricted by liability concerns. Under the deal, 300,000 doses of J&J’s single-shot vaccine would be made available to front-line humanitarian workers and U.N. peacekeepers, the official said. read more

Severe sleep apnea tied to severe COVID-19

The risk of severe illness from COVID-19 is higher in people with obstructive sleep apnea and other breathing problems that cause oxygen levels to drop during sleep, researchers say.

While the chance of being infected did not increase with the severity of their problems, people with higher scores on the “apnea-hypopnia index” – a measure of the severity of their sleep-related breathing problems – had higher odds of needing to be hospitalized or dying from COVID-19, doctors Cinthya Pena Orbea and Reena Mehra of the Cleveland Clinic and colleagues reported on Wednesday in JAMA Network Open. It is not clear if treatments that improve sleep apnea, such as CPAP machines that push air into patients’ airways during sleep, would also reduce the risk of severe COVID-19, said Pena Orbea and Mehra. read more