Europe staggers as infectious variants power coronavirus surge
Source: AP by way of MPR News
The virus swept through a nursery school and an adjacent elementary school in the Milan suburb of Bollate with amazing speed. In a matter of just days, 45 children and 14 staff members had tested positive.
Genetic analysis confirmed what officials already suspected: The highly contagious coronavirus variant first identified in England was racing through the community, a densely packed city of nearly 40,000 with a chemical plant and a Pirelli bicycle tire factory a 15-minute drive from the heart of Milan.
"This demonstrates that the virus has a sort of intelligence. ... We can put up all the barriers in the world and imagine that they work, but in the end, it adapts and penetrates them,'' lamented Bollate Mayor Francesco Vassallo.
... Europe recorded 1 million new COVID-19 cases last week, an increase of 9 percent from the previous week and a reversal that ended a six-week decline in new infections, WHO said Thursday.
Read more: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2021/03/06/europe-staggers-as-infectious-variants-power-coronavirus-surge
In Lombardy, ... intensive care wards are again filling up, with more than two-thirds of new positive tests being the UK variant,
The situation is dire in the Czech Republic, ..
etc. etc.
The South Africa variant, now present in 26 European countries, ... the Brazilian variant in 15 European countries
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Coronavirus World Map, New York Times (no paywall on Covid coverage)
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/world/coronavirus-maps.html
Daily new cases have increased a bit world-wide since February 19, after steeply falling since January 11.
On the map, one can mouse over a country and see the current daily new cases per 100,000 population, and also the 14-day trendline for the country.
= new reply since forum marked as read
We live in Cork City, but Cork isn't doing too badly thankfully, especially compared with Dublin and surrounding counties. I mostly take my dog to the local park, but we are all hoping that they increase the 5km to County again, as we are all desperate to get to the beaches !! Our dog especially !!! 
Before Covid, I would work from home 98% of the time so it wasn't a big jump to 100% ! My wife however, works for a Pharma company and has had to go to work every day even during lockdowns. My aunt got covid in a nursing home but thankfully was asymptomatic. My son will be going back to school supposedly on April 12, but since he's in 2nd year, I think September would be time enough for non-exam years.
I remember back in November that the HSE were saying that vaccine rollout would start in late December but would dip in February and early March, so I haven't been surprised by the supply issues but of course the opposition will always pounce on stuff like that !!! I fully expect things to ramp up significantly by the last week of March or the first week of April. I'm in group 4, and I'm think that it might be May before they get to me, so I suspect group 5 might be a little later than that, though it might depend on your GP.
Stay safe yourselves, hopefully we will be free of this and have a great summer
Have you seen this on geohub ?
https://covid19ireland-geohive.hub.arcgis.com/
My 81 year old sister-in-law is due to be vaccinated on Wednesday.
She lives in Kildare and is very relieved to say the least.
They've been "cocooning" for over a year now and are weary of the situation is my take on it.'
& recommend.
have more "intelligence" then the entirety of the GOP! 
If it wasn't for them, we would have had this thing under control by June of last year. But oh no, "open, open, open" because they had to own the libs.
they inevitably get a spike and have to dial it back. We have watched this pattern over and over and over, and not just in Europe, but in Asia too. Their countries have gone through several cycles of lock down/open up/lock down/open up.
But what is sad is that we will see columnists and commentators here in the U.S. write these long glowing articles with headlines along the lines of - "What has (fill in the blank country) done right?? Let's do that here!!111!!!". And then a month later, that (fill in the blank country) is experiencing a spike, and then you might see some passing mention of their "retrench" and some type of draconian lock down, and then they quietly disappear from the news cycle. 
