POLAND, BELGIUM, BRITAIN, CZECH REPUBLIC OUTBREAK BARED

Poland has turned its largest stadium into an emergency field hospital. The numbers of COVID-19 patients in Belgium and Britain have doubled in two weeks. And doctors and nurses in the Czech Republic are falling ill at an alarming rate, the New York Times reported

While hospitals in Europe were initially spared the mass influx of patients they faced during the outbreak in the spring, a second wave of serious illness is here and hospitals could become overrun, new data released on Thursday shows.

The number of COVID-19 patients in hospitals across the continent is still less than half of the peak in March and April, but it is rising each week. People across much of Europe are now more likely to be hospitalized after contracting the virus than those in the United States.

Some experts worry that countries that let their guards down did not increase hospital capacity during a temporary reprieve and are not prepared. Deaths in most of Europe have ticked slowly upward, and experts say increases in deaths are likely over the next couple of weeks.