1/n Auch ein Blick in die nahe Zukunft der Schweiz: «Well into Europe's second wave of the coronavirus, so many Belgians are sick or quarantining that there aren't enough police on the streets, teachers in classrooms or medical staff in hospitals.» washingtonpost.com/world/europe/b… 😢
2/n «We have runaway numbers in terms of contamination and a major issue is the risk of the collapse of the hospital system of our country […].»
3/n «In some hospitals, doctors and nurses who have tested positive but don’t have symptoms are being asked to keep working, because so many others are out sick with #COVID19 […].»
4/n «School principals are marshaling secretaries and parent volunteers to replace falling ranks of teachers.»
5/n «[…] months of preparation haven’t been able to avert a shortage of people.»
6/n «The country's testing infrastructure is overloaded. As of this past week, Belgium is no longer testing people without symptoms, even if they may have been exposed.»
7/n «The situation may be especially problematic in intensive care units. […] a full team of skilled personnel is needed to keep patients monitored in ICUs. Some hospitals are already warning they may not be able to keep all their ICU beds in operation […].»
8/n «ANGRY that we were unable to avoid this predicted scenario. […] Even doctors who are healthy — for now — say they are close to burnout.»
9/n «But infections are shooting upward, and deaths are likely to follow.»
10/n «The second wave is testing Belgian schools, as well. Schools here have continued mostly in-person […].»
11/n «The federation recently surveyed its primary schools and found 23 percent of teachers are sick or quarantining […]. cases among students and staff more than doubled between the second and third weeks of October […].»
12/n «For now, Belgian leaders have avoided imposing a full lockdown, although increasingly frustrated public health experts say a new one is inevitable.»
13/n «But even more limited measures […] depend in part on police being able to enforce the rules. In at least parts of Belgium, that power is increasingly in question — because the police themselves are getting sick.»
14/n «In the province surrounding the city of Liège, ‹around 50 percent of police officers are not at work› […].»
15/15 «At a station in northern Belgium, three officers recently tested positive at one time […]. They had no symptoms, so their superiors simply put them together on a single patrol unit — they could keep working without fear of infecting each other.»
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