COVID-19 epidemic ‘showing time,’ EU watchdog says

The world’s economy has now been hit by the coronavirus epidemic and the European Union rules out restricting tourism as the peak of the disease’ season does not seem to be any closer, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) said on Thursday.

EFSA chief Urs Schuele said that the outbreak was showing time for the EU as the science and medical communities were moving forward to fill in the snow.

“The virus situation we are confronting now is of course developing totally with time and on a rapid timeline. I would not say it is showing time at all,” she told a news conference.

She said that it may be more complicated to put in place reopening programmes for garden centres in winter to contain the virus now that long lines have formed.

“In other cases of the winter, we can see it is being pushed back already a little,” she said.

Non-essential meals, like bread and milk, are on standby, she explained, adding it was too soon yet to say if this meant food safety problems in summer.

This month, the supply of chefs, who are often the main source of income for the restaurant sector which accounts for 25% of Germany’s roughly 7.1 million chefs in the two months after opening, has been strained.

The country has four-fifths more confirmed cases of COVERT, an umbrella behavioral disorder that can cause severe respiratory infection and can last anywhere from two to 10 days.

The European Food Safety Authority said districts that received some 12 to 16 food-distribution trucks daily last week have now been exposed to the virus.

“These districts are taken by surprise by how the virus has spread in such numbers. And of course we are very disappointed with this news,” industry group SDAG Zwischenbegefahre, which represents chefs, said.

The number of doctors and scientists testing positive has risen by 107 to 30,600 so far, the federal health ministry said last week.

The region around Berlin is coping with more than 200,000 coronavirus cases, or 19,200 a day, the largest number among Germany’s 27 federal states, according to public broadcaster ZDF.