A top Russian expert in virus control says Europe is experiencing the continuation of the initial stage of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the current increase in infections is not a sign of a “second wave” as many experts speculate.
Worryingly, Nikolai Malyshev, the chief infectious diseases specialist in the Moscow Health Ministry, believes there will be a new outbreak, but it will come in the fall, as the daylight hours become fewer and the weather gets colder.
“The rise in respiratory infections, as you and I know, [occurs] yearly at the end of autumn and the beginning of winter,” Malyshev explained at a press conference on Monday. “Gradually, the flu already begins to appear, possibly, the rise in respiratory diseases will be a little earlier. The coronavirus is also a respiratory disease, and I think that along with the rise in respiratory infections there will be a certain rise in coronavirus.”
A number of countries in western and southern Europe, who were hit hard by the first major outbreaks of Covid-19 in the spring, have experienced an uptick in cases since the beginning of July, soon after the opening of internal, and some external, borders. As a result, the situation has worsened in Spain, Germany, and France.
However, Malyshev insists this is all this part of the first stage of the pandemic. “I am still inclined [to think] that the WHO [the World Health Organization] in this case is right, that this is a continuation of that wave, rather to say, the current, the present one,” he added. “We see that the outbreaks are uneven, the incidence is uneven.”
