World News | Dutch Hospital Airlifts Patients to Germany Amid Virus Surge

Almere, Oct 23 (AP) A bright yellow helicopter rose into a blue sky Friday carrying a COVID-19 patient from the Netherlands to a German intensive care unit, the first such international airlift since the global pandemic first threatened to swamp Dutch hospitals in the spring.

The clatter of the helicopter's rotors as it lifted off from a parking lot behind the Flevohospital in Almere, 30 kilometers (20 miles) east of Amsterdam, was a noisy reminder of how the coronavirus is again gripping Europe and straining countries' health care systems.

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In other cities across the continent, an absence of noise was set to underscore the extent of the resurgence of the virus as major cities from Rome to Paris rein in nightlife as part of the increasingly drastic measures nations are enforcing in an attempt to slow the spread of the pandemic.

In addition to the three overnight curfews declared early in the week by governors of Italian regions including Rome, Milan and Naples, the capital moved to make “nightlife” hours even shorter for young people who tend to hang out in trendy piazzas, carousing for hours without masks as they sip cocktails and knock down beers.

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Rome's populist Five-Star Movement mayor, Virginia Raggi, signed an ordinance putting off limits, until Nov. 13, several gathering spots highly popular for night-time drinking starting at 9 p.m.

The crackdown covers landmark nocturnal hangouts including Campo de' Fiori, a vast expanse in the heart of Rome that doubles as an open-air food market during the day, and Piazza Trilussa, a square near the Tiber River that is usually packed in the evening with rowdy drinkers.

A curfew imposed on Paris and other French cities last week was extended to 38 more regions starting Friday night.

A four-and-a-half hour nightly curfew is to come into effect Saturday night in the Greek capital, Athens, and the country's second largest city of Thessaloniki, as well as several other areas deemed to have high infection rates.

In Spain, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez publicly appealed for the country to pull together to defeat the new coronavirus.

“We have to step up the fight,” he said in a televised address to the nation which this week became the first European country to surpass 1 million officially recorded COVID-19 cases. Sánchez admitted, though, that the true figure could be more than 3 million, due to gaps in testing and other reasons.

Worldwide, the virus has infected more than 41 million people and killed more than 1.1 million, according to a count by Johns Hopkins University. The true numbers are far higher due to gaps in testing and reporting cases.

Restrictions on European daily life even extended to closing the 31-seat parliament on the Arctic island of Greenland after a member of the assembly's financial committee was in contact with a person who had tested positive. The Parliament, or Inatsisartut, was to have met Thursday for its one-day fall session but it was canceled.

The Dutch airlift to a hospital in the German city of Muenster came amid soaring rates of infection in the Netherlands, where the seven-day rolling average of daily new cases has risen over the past two weeks from 24.58 new cases per 100,000 people on Oct. 7 to 47.74 new cases per 100,000 on Oct 21.

As of Thursday, there were 463 COVID-19 patients in Dutch intensive care units.

Flevohospital spokesman Peter Pels said flying patients across an international border was a last resort after other hospitals in the region around Almere said their intensive care units couldn't take them. The hospital was transferring two patients to Germany on Friday. (AP)

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)