On the 2nd local time, the European Commission urged member states to continue to strengthen the construction of their health systems and impose necessary restrictions on social gatherings before the upcoming Christmas holiday to avoid triggering a new round of COVID-19.
On the same day, the health ministers of the 27 member states of the European Union held a videoconference to assess the current pandemic situation in the European Union and discuss further strengthening anti-pandemic cooperation.
“The measures related to pandemic prevention and control must continue until the coronavirus vaccine is successfully deployed, especially during the year-end holidays,” said Kiria Kides, the European Commission’s health and food safety commissioner, at a press conference. As with many things, this year’s end of the year holiday will be different from previous years, which is inevitable. The most important thing this year is to save lives. We want everyone to celebrate Christmas safely, and we know that everyone has sacrificed for it, but we can’t let Christmas or New Year’s celebrations be a super-spreading event of the virus.” Kyriakides said.
The European Commission also suggested that countries could extend school leave or promote online teaching for a period of time after the holiday to minimize the possibility of virus infection by creating a “buffer period”.
Since October this year, with the rapid rebound of the COVID-19 pandemic in EU countries, many countries have tightened epidemic prevention and control measures, including unprecedentedly severe local “lockdowns” and curfews. Recently, the epidemic situation in EU countries has generally eased, and countries have once again put “lifting the blockade” on the agenda, which has also aroused European public opinion to worry about the rebound of the epidemic again.
