Investigating the impact of Covid-19 in Europe
COVID-19 pandemic exposes southern Europe’s nursing shortage
For weeks, Spain and Italy were epicentres of the COVID-19 pandemic. Their health defences had an important gap: large staffing shortages and low ratios of nurses to doctors. At the same time, nurses had higher infection rates than the general population, mainly because of the lack of personal protective equipment.
We have gathered data on excess deaths from 500 European regions to better understand the spread of the virus. Some regions report up to three times as many deaths as usual since March, but a large part of Europe has been able to live through the first wave of the pandemic without any significant excess death.
You can explore the pedestrian occupation, road traffic and flights of European capitals in this data visualization, which shows the current percentage of occupation compared to the normal levels before the coronavirus lockdown.
