Coronavirus

The grave sweepers came early this year. When I visited one 18th century cemetery in Warsaw, half the tombstones had already been tidied and decked with pots of yellow chrysanthemums, well before All Saints’ Day. The other graves remained obscured by sodden piles of leaves. Many cemeteries may not see guests at all this year. Traditionally, on the first day of November millions of Poles travel to their family tombs for All Saints’ Day – some traversing the entire country to reach rural resting places in ancestral hometowns. When they arrive, they lay new plastic flowers, throwing away last year’s imitations, by now turned pale yellow and fluorescent green. In cities public

Across Europe, more and more states are imposing stricter and stricter restrictions to try and slow coronavirus’s spread. The Irish, despite having initially rejected the advice of their scientists to move to the highest level of restrictions, have now done so. Emmanuel Macron set himself against another national lockdown, but then announced one on Wednesday night, albeit with schools staying open. But, as I say in the Times this morning, life in Asia continues to return to normal. Case numbers are pancake-like in Japan, China, South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand and Singapore, while Taiwan has gone 200 days without a locally transmitted case. There are, rightly, limits to what the UK

A few years ago, when I was in the queue to catch a plane, a Spanish lady caught me watching her as she surreptitiously removed a sticker from her hand luggage, which meant it would have been stored in the hold. ‘Los españoles somos muy pícaros’ (we Spaniards are real rogues) she told me with a smile of complicity and a rueful shake of the head. Spaniards sometimes point out with a touch of pride that it was their country which pioneered the picaresque novel – a literary genre which tells the story of an ingenious rascal who lives by his wits, sometimes on the wrong side of the law.

When the pandemic first hit, other countries turned to the Czech Republic for lessons in how to deal with Covid-19. But while the country coped relatively well back then, the second wave has been rather more brutal.  The Czech Republic now has the highest rate of Covid-19 infection in Europe and one of the highest in the world. A new daily record of 9,544 cases was set yesterday; just a few weeks ago, 500 new cases a day was cause for concern. The death toll has now risen above 1,000, over 2,500 people are in hospital with Covid-19, and almost a quarter of all tests performed come back positive. During the ‘first