The coronavirus is spreading even faster than it did during the first phase of the pandemic, a French government adviser said on Friday as authorities across Europe scrambled to try to contain the disease once again racing through the continent.

France, set to pass 1 million cases later on Friday after posting a record daily total of more than 41,000 a day earlier, has been one of the countries hardest hit in the second wave and has imposed curfews across much of the nation.

Covid patients occupy nearly half of all of France’s 5,000 intensive care beds and its well-regarded health system has been showing increasing signs of strain.

“The virus is circulating more quickly than in the spring,” epidemiologist Arnaud Fontanet, who sits on the Scientific Council advising the French government, said.

The disease is in resurgence all over Europe, where daily reported cases have more than doubled in 10 days, crossing 200,000 daily infections for the first time on Thursday, according to a Reuters tally.

“We are all afraid,” said Maria, a 73-year old pensioner in Dolny Kubin, Slovakia, where officials were piloting a testing scheme the government plans to roll out across the whole country of 5.5 million. “I see what’s happening and it is terrifying.”

Around the continent, further restrictions are being planned by governments desperate to avoid a repeat of the blanket lockdowns that brought a measure of control in March and April at the cost of shutting down their whole economies.

In Spain, which passed the grim 1 million case milestone earlier this week, two regions, Castilla and Leon and Valencia, urged the central government to impose night-time curfews quickly to stem the spread.

Recession fears

How long the resistance to lockdowns will last is uncertain.

The governor of Campania, the southern Italian region around Naples which has imposed a curfew and shut schools, announced plans for a total lockdown, saying “half measures” were not working.

“It is necessary to close everything, except for those businesses that produce and transport essential goods,” Vincenzo De Luca said.

Underlining the threat, a business survey on Friday showed service sector companies cutting back heavily as more and more consumers stayed home, raising the likelihood of a double dip recession this year in Europe’s single currency zone.