Coronavirus live news: South Yorkshire goes into tier 3 restrictions, Polish president tests positive

The AFP has provided this wrap of the current Covid-19 situation in Europe:

The European Union’s disease control agency has joined frantic health workers to sound the alarm over a coronavirus surge across the continent, as the World Health Organization warned of an “exponential” rise in infections.

Even countries that avoided severe outbreaks during Europe’s first wave of contagion in the spring have watched their case numbers surge, with Germany’s death toll passing 10,000 on Saturday.

Governments have reintroduced containment measures to slow the renewed spread of the virus in nations that only weeks earlier believed they had triumphed over the crisis.

But populations weary of social isolation and economic hardship have pushed back against fresh restrictions, including overnight clashes in Italy’s hard-hit Naples between police and hundreds of protesters.

After Spain became the first European country to officially record a million Covid-19 cases earlier in the week, the prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, said on Friday the real number of infections was likely more than triple that number.

France followed Spain past the million-case milestone on Friday while Germany hit a fresh daily record of nearly 15,000 new cases, with health authorities urging the public to follow social distancing measures.

Urgent new restrictions on daily life have come into effect in several nations, with France extending a curfew to cover 46 million people.

Wales entered a full lockdown on Friday evening, a day after Ireland shut down, while Poland adopted a nationwide “red zone” lockdown mandating the partial closure of primary schools and restaurants.

Only Sweden, which famously refused to lock down earlier this year, continued to stick to its guns despite a rise in cases.

Belgium has seen one of Europe’s deadliest per capita outbreaks and has found itself suffering some of the highest second-wave infection rates in Europe.

“We’re losing. We’re overwhelmed. We’re bitter,” said Benoit Misset, the head of the intensive care unit at the University hospital in the city of Liege, where several of his staff are having to work despite being positive – if asymptomatic – themselves.