The Wall Street Journal reports:

The European Union’s fight against Covid-19 is stuck in midwinter, even as spring and vaccinations spur hope of improvement in the U.S. and U.K.

Contagion is rising again in much of the EU, despite months of restrictions on daily life, as more-virulent virus strains outpace vaccinations. A mood of gloom and frustration is settling on the continent, and governments are caught between their promises of progress and the bleak epidemiological reality.

Virus infections and deaths have been falling rapidly in the U.S. and U.K. since January as inoculations take off among the elderly and other vulnerable groups. In the EU, however, new Covid-19 cases have been rising again since mid-February. U.S. infections and deaths, which were higher on a per-capita basis for most of 2020, have fallen below the bloc’s.

In much of the continent, the spread of the more-aggressive variant first detected in the U.K. is behind the worsening of the pandemic, undoing strenuous efforts to rein in the virus since the fall with an array of restrictions that have brought the bloc’s economic recovery to a standstill.

Governments and public-health experts say only a combination of accelerated vaccinations and gradual reopening can defeat Covid-19’s latest rebound. But the EU’s efforts continue to suffer from its slowness in procuring and approving vaccines, production delays at vaccine makers, and bureaucratic holdups in injecting available doses.

So far, there is nothing like the acute hospital crisis that overwhelmed healthcare systems in parts of Italy and Spain a year ago. Instead, the bloc’s public-health crisis has become chronic, with authorities struggling constantly to tamp down the flames. [Continue reading…]