(CN) – With more than 2,600 new deaths over the weekend, the coronavirus pandemic is intensifying in Europe and the number of deaths is on track to surpass 10,000 in what many are calling Europe's worst crisis since World War II.
Italy reported an astonishing 793 more deaths on Saturday – a new one-day record – and 651 deaths on Sunday. By Monday evening, 601 more people had died of the virus, bringing the country’s death toll to 6,077.
Spain, too, reported a sharp increase in deaths and confirmed cases, bringing its death toll to 2,182. France and the United Kingdom are seeing deaths climb too, 674 in France and 289 in the U.K.
There are more than 367,000 confirmed cases worldwide and 16,097 deaths, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.
“The pandemic is accelerating,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization, in a news conference on Monday.
“It took 67 days to reach 100,000 cases, seven days for the next 100,000, and four days for the third 100,000 cases,” he said. “But we're not prisoners to statistics. We're not helpless bystanders. We can change the trajectory of this pandemic.”
He urged the world to go on the offensive by aggressively pursuing mass testing to find infected people, carefully treating the sick and rigorously tracking down people who might be infected and not know it.
“What matters most is what we do,” he said. “To win, we need to attack the virus with aggressive and targeted tactics.”
He said measures like those now in effect in the United States and Europe – closing down schools and businesses, forcing people to stay at home and keep away from each, urging people to be more hygienic – are defensive tactics and not sufficient to defeat the deadly virus known as Covid-19.
Experts say the pandemic's peak in Europe is likely still weeks away. As of Monday, more than 9,200 people had died from the disease.
Scenes of deserted streets and monumental squares in Europe's capitals, the retreat of millions of people into the safety of their homes, the shutdown of businesses and factories and the rising death toll are leading many to compare what's happening to World War II.
“The correct metaphor for this crisis is not the Global Financial Crisis, but World War II,” Branko Milanovic, a respected Serbian-American socio-economist, said on Twitter.
On Sunday, Spanish Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called on the European Union to enact a “Marshall Plan” to recover from this crisis. The Marshall Plan was a U.S.-led reconstruction strategy that poured funds into Europe after the devastation caused by World War II.
“This is a crisis that is affecting all of the EU,” Sanchez said. “We need to articulate a grand Marshall Plan of reconstruction.”
For now, the focus is on stopping the spread of the new coronavirus, which first emerged in China in December.
With the numbers of new confirmed cases and deaths still extremely high, Italy is trying to contain the spread by enforcing an even stricter lockdown and shutting down all but the most essential businesses and industries. In one region, Emilia-Romagna, authorities are hoping to stay ahead of the virus through mass testing. There is hope that Italy may reach a peak in infections this week and see a slow decline in new cases.