from Saturday in Paris and other major cities, affecting almost one-third of the country's 67 million people.
Bars and pubs were among the first to shut or face earlier closing in the new lockdowns, but now the surging infection rates are also testing governments' resolve to keep schools and non-COVID medical care going. "Sometimes we are at the edge of crying," said Lenka Krejcova, a head nurse at Slany hospital near Prague, as builders hurried to turn a general ward into a COVID-19 department.
"We are on the brink of disaster," immunologist Pawel Grzesiowski said in Poland, which reported a record 6,526 infections and 116 deaths on Wednesday. The United Kingdom, France, Russia and Spain accounted for more than half of Europe's new cases in the week to Oct 11, according to the World Health Organization.
In Belgium, with Europe's second worst infection rate per capita, hospitals must now reserve a quarter of their beds for COVID-19 patients.