Paris [France], June 27: Heatwave conditions that have left Spain, France and the UK sweltering for days are set to shift to the east, with forecasters in Germany and the Czech Republic warning of extreme conditions.
Temperatures in Germany could hit 40C in some western and south-western areas on Thursday, and across the country on Friday. An extreme weather warning is now in place in much of the Czech Republic.
In France, Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu announced the health alert level is being raised to its highest, to boost hospital staffing and protect the vulnerable.
Health Minister Stephanie Rist said they were now seeing deaths linked to the extreme temperatures among "young people who suffer cardiac arrests", as well as the elderly.
United Nations climate change chief Simon Stiell has said "Europe's savage heatwave has the fingerprints of the climate crisis all over it", and he has called for "a faster shift to renewables, protecting forests and boosting climate resilience".
After France recorded its hottest day on Wednesday for the second day in a row, records continue to be broken. Meteo-France said the average minimum temperature reached 22C on Wednesday night. Nantes saw 27.2C in the north-west.
After days of high temperatures in Paris, the health minister said the ambulance service in Paris had seen four times more cardiac arrests than normal over a 24-hour period, although she stressed there were no confirmed figures for the number of deaths linked to the heatwave.
Paris mayor Emmanuel Gregoire said the mortality rate was on the rise in the capital.
Meanwhile, a three-year-old child has been found dead in a car in the Paris region, days after two young children were found dead in the family's car in the southern town of Carpentras. In the north-western city of Rennes, the head of the Accident and Emergency department Professor Louis Soulas linked the deaths of five or six people in their homes in the region to the extreme temperatures.
Emergency services had gone to check in on them after they had failed to pick up their phones during welfare calls, said Soulas: "It's not just the very elderly; it's people aged 60 and up."
Rennes saw a record 40.6C on Monday, only for that to be broken by 41C the following day. The previous record dated back to 2022. The region's intensive care units were "saturated," he warned. "We are truly at a peak of activity."
Sebastien Lecornu said France's Orsan health emergency plan was now moving to level three so the health system could "withstand the strain over time and protect the most vulnerable".
Source: Qatar Tribune
