In the last week, Austria, the Netherlands and Belgium have all adopted stricter measures including partial lockdowns to try to stem the latest surge of the coronavirus. Germany is also set to record more than 100,000 COVID-19 deaths this week, with some politicians now calling for a vaccine mandate, like the one ordered in Austria. Even France’s vaccinated prime minister Jean Castex, has tested positive for the virus, prompting him to be singled out as an example of what not to do in a pandemic, as videos circulate of the maskless PM shaking hands with officials in an enclosed space at a Paris mayoral congress.

The World Health Organization (WHO) says that coronavirus cases jumped by 11% in Europe in the last week, the only region in the world where COVID-19 has continued to increase since mid-October, prompting the WHO’s Europe director Dr. Hans Kluge to warn that without urgent measures taken soon, the continent could see another 700,000 deaths by the spring.

“The European region remains in the firm grip of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Kluge said, calling for countries to increase vaccination and to take other control measures like masking and social distancing to avoid “the last resort of lockdowns.”

He noted that while more than 1 billion vaccine doses have been administered across WHO’s European region, which stretches to central Asia, the range in vaccination coverage varies from 10% to 80%.

At the same time, the WHO reported that COVID-19 in Southeast Asia and the Middle East dropped by 11% and 9% respectively, while the biggest decrease in coronavirus deaths in the last week was seen in Africa, where fatalities fell by 30%, continuing decreasing trends in COVID-19 that first began in late June.

Although cases remained stable in the Americas, WHO said the number of deaths rose by about 19%.

In the face of a host of serious anti-vax/lockdown protests across the continent, European leaders are warning that the massive spike in cases is threatening the European Union’s recovery from the deep economic slump caused by last year’s onset of the pandemic.

And medical experts warned that the public health situation could get much worse and warned of more hardship ahead, while calling for urgent measures that could impact crucial sectors like the restaurant, bar, and tourism industries, already badly hit by the virus last year.

Already, a host of river cruises companies including Avalon, Crystal, Scenic, Tauck, and Uniworld, have cancelled or suspended cruises – centred around now-closed Christmas markets – for the remainder of the year and others are assessing the situation.

The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control said in a report Wednesday that the burden from the highly contagious delta variant first detected in India “is expected to be very high in December and January,” unless drastic government action in taken and vaccinations tick further upward.

ECDC Director Andrea Ammon spoke of health systems already being overwhelmed in some EU nations, and others being close to it. “We have to take it now really seriously in the sense that measures have to be applied in order to reduce transmission.”

It all goes against initial expectations for the holiday season when it was thought that Europeans unburdened by COVID-19 restrictions would dip into their forced savings of the past year and spend, giving the economy a major shot in the arm.

EU Economy Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni, said, “Our only message is: Take the situation very seriously.”