People walk on Tower Bridge in London, Britain, on Sept. 14, 2020. (Photo by Tim Ireland/Xinhua)
-- UK COVID-19 alert level recommended to raise to level 4
-- German health minister to upgrade COVID-19 strategy: report
-- Spanish PM Sanchez meets Madrid region leader over COVID-19 measures
-- COVID-19 infections in Finland exceed 9,000
BRUSSELS, Sept. 21 (Xinhua) -- The following are the latest developments of the COVID-19 pandemic in European countries.
LONDON -- Britain's chief medical officers (CMOs) have recommended moving the country's COVID-19 alert level from level 3 to level 4, according to a joint statement released on Monday from the CMOs.
"The CMOs for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have reviewed the evidence and recommend all 4 nations of the UK should move to level 4," said the statement.
Level 4 means the COVID-19 epidemic is in general circulation, the transmission is high or rising exponentially.
The recommendation was tabled at a time when countries such as Britain, China, Russia and the United States are racing against time to develop coronavirus vaccines.
After a period of lower COVID-19 cases and deaths, the number of cases is "now rising rapidly and probably exponentially in significant parts of all four nations", said the CMOs.
Britain recorded another 4,368 confirmed COVID-19 cases overnight on Monday, bringing the total number of such cases to 398,625, according to the latest official figures.
Passengers wearing face masks are seen at the main train station in Frankfurt, Germany, on Aug. 29, 2020. (Photo by Kevin Voigt/Xinhua)
BERLIN -- Germany's Minister of Health Jens Spahn said on Monday that he wanted to prepare the country for a potential increase in COVID-19 infection numbers during the cold season by setting up outpatient clinics and a new testing strategy.
"In autumn, we need regional and local so-called fever outpatient clinics to which patients with typical respiratory symptoms, such as corona and flu, can turn," Spahn told the German newspaper Rheinische Post on Monday.
The minister said he was counting on the Associations of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KV), responsible for the medical care of people insured by statutory health insurance companies in Germany, to offer such outpatient clinics locally. "In concept, they already exist -- they should be accessible nationwide in autumn," said Spahn.
The daily number of new reported COVID-19 cases in Germany has increased by 922 to a total of 272,337 over the past 24 hours, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) said on Monday. Last week, Germany recorded the highest number of new confirmed cases since April.
Children wait for their parents after school in Madrid, Spain, on Sept. 9, 2020. (Xinhua/Meng Dingbo)
MADRID -- Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Monday met the leader of the Autonomous Community of Madrid, Isabel Diaz Ayuso, in an attempt to find a way to contain the spread of COVID-19 in and around the Spanish capital.
The meeting, held in the offices of the Madrid regional government in the center of the capital, saw the two politicians put their ideological differences aside and set up a "space for cooperation ... with the creation of a 'COVID-19 group' that will hold weekly meetings to address the monitoring of a response to the evolution of the pandemic," according to a communique published by the Community of Madrid.
This group will be made up of Spanish Health Minister Salvador Illa; the Minister for Territorial Policy and Public Function Carolina Darias; Enrique Ruiz Escudero, who is responsible for health in the Community of Madrid; and Regional Vice President Ignacio Aguado.
Sanchez said that the group was to hold its first meeting later on Monday.
A citizen stops at the famous city sculpture "Three Smiths" which has been put on facial masks, in Helsinki, Finland, March 31, 2020. (Xinhua/Zhu Haochen)
HELSINKI -- The total number of COVID-19 infections in Finland rose to 9,046 on Monday, up by 66 from a day earlier, according to the latest figures published by the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL).
The death toll has reached 341, up by two in the past 24 hours. An estimated 7,700 patients have recovered, accounting for over 85 percent of the total infections, said THL.
During the past week, the occurrence rate in Finland had risen to 10.2 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, and now it has reached 11.5 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.■
