European airlines cutting fares to woo back passengers

According to ForwardKeys, a company which analyses the tourism market,
airlines trimmed fares from Britain, France, Germany and the Netherlands
to destinations in southern Europe by 15 percent in August compared
with the same period last year.

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Netherlands lockdown looming if people ignore Covid rules: Security boss

With coronavirus infections continuing to rise fast, and hospitalizations for Covid-19 growing at an exponential rate, lockdown measures will be needed to get the health problem under control if people do not do a better job of maintaining a safe distance from each other, said Nijmegen Mayor Hubert Bruls. In addition to his role as mayor, Bruls serves as the chair of the Gelderland-Zuid Security Region, one of eight regions added to the list of those at a "worrying" level with regard to the coronavirus crisis.

Read more at: https://nltimes.nl/

The Netherlands: More Dutch seniors active on social media

Social media usage among the elderly in the Netherlands has soared in recent years. The group 65 to 74-year-olds in particular have become increasingly active users.

In 2019, 76 percent of the respondents in this age category said they had used social media, up from 40 percent five years previously. An ncrease in social media use was also seen among people aged 75 and over. Exchanging text messages, via WhatsApp for example, is most popular among the elderly for passing along information. This is according to recent figures taken from the survey on ICT usage by households and individuals in 2019,
More Dutch seniors active on social media

The Netherlands: National measures needed to get coronavirus under control in the Netherlands - by Victoria Séveno

Speaking at a press conference on Friday, September 18, Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Health Minister Hugo de Jonge announced that six of the 25 security regions in the Netherlands had entered the “worrying” alert phase (code orange). At Wednesday’s parliamentary debate, Rutte announced that a further eight regions would join them< Read more at: 

National measures needed to get coronavirus under control in the Netherlands

The Netherlands - a source for life after death: Dutch 'living coffin' aims to provide source for life after death

 A Dutch startup has created a biodegradable "living coffin" made of a fungus instead of wood that it says can convert a decomposing human body into key nutrients for plants.

Loop company says its casket is made of mycelium, the underground root structure of mushrooms, and filled with a bed of moss to stimulate decomposition.

"Mycelium is nature's biggest recycler," Bob Hendrikx, creator of the living coffin.

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Dutch 'living coffin' aims to provide source for life after death |

Coronavirus: Can Europe tame the pandemic’s next wave? - by Kai Kupferschmidt

We’re at risk of gambling away our success,” virologist Christian Drosten warned in the German newspaper Die Zeit last month. His message referred to Germany, but it could have been addressed to all of Europe. After beating back COVID-19 in the spring, most of Europe is seeing a resurgence. Spain is reporting close to 10,000 cases a day, more than it had at the height of the outbreak in the spring. France is back to reporting thousands of cases a day. In Germany, numbers are still low, but rising steadily. The pandemic is affecting countries that saw few cases in the spring, such as Greece and Malta, but is also rebounding in places that suffered terribly, including the cities of Madrid and Barcelona.

Few dispute that Europe rose to the initial challenge. In Bergamo, a hotspot in Italy’s Lombardy region, crematoria were so overburdened in March that army trucks had to transport the dead to other cities—but on 24 May, Lombardy registered zero COVID-19 deaths for the first time. By early July, the European Union and the United Kingdom together averaged fewer than 5000 new cases per day, whereas the United States and Brazil (which together have roughly the same population) had 50,000 and 40,000, respectively. Europeans enjoyed a surprisingly normal summer, with northern Europeans flocking to Mediterranean beaches.

The rising case numbers today aren’t quite comparable to the peak in April because countries are now testing far more people on a daily basis. But the increase shows that Europe relaxed measures too early and too much, says virologist Ab Osterhaus of the University of Veterinary Medicine in Hanover, Germany. “The wrong message was given, basically: We have done a great job and now we can relax again.” Instead, Europe could have tried to emulate New Zealand by stopping community transmission completely and zealously guarding against reintroductions, says Devi Sridhar, a global health expert at the University of Edinburgh who has been advising the Scottish government. Scotland committed early on to pushing case numbers down to zero, but other countries did not, and now almost all are seeing a resurgence

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Can Europe tame the pandemic’s next wave? | Science | AAAS

Coronavirus: Beware: Fall and winter could be a friend to COVID-19, experts say - by Peter Krouse

 

A pandemic of the novel coronavirus has now killed more than 942,000 people worldwide.Over 30 million people across the globe have been diagnosed with COVID-19, the disease caused by the new respiratory virus, according to data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.The criteria for diagnosis -- through clinical means or a lab test -- has varied from country-to-country. Still, the actual numbers are believed to be much higher due to testing shortages, many unreported  cases and suspicions that some national governments are hiding or  downplaying the scope of their outbreaks.

Since the first cases were detected in China in December, the virus has rapidly spread to every continent except Antarctica.

The United States is the worst-affected country, with more than 6.6 million diagnosed cases and at least 197,397 deaths.

Read more at: https://www.cleveland.com/news/2020/08/beware-fall-and-winter-could-be-a-friend-to-covid-19-experts-say.html