The latest wave of Covid-19 cases is hitting Europe with a vengeance with a number of countries seeing record numbers of daily infections, imposing partial lockdowns and placing more restrictions on unvaccinated people.

Germany shattered a new record on Thursday, reporting more than 65,000 new cases, with health officials warning that the true number of cases could be two or three times as many.

In the neighboring Netherlands, more than 20,000 new cases were reported Wednesday, a new record for the third day in a row, and in France, where a fifth wave of the pandemic is underway, the number of new cases topped 20,000 on Wednesday, a level not reached since Aug. 25, Reuters reported.

Germany’s outgoing chancellor, Angela Merkel, is meeting the country’s 16 state premiers on Thursday to discuss her country’s national response to what she described yesterday as a “dramatic” situation.

Germany’s states have been largely free to determine their own Covid responses and public health measures, leading to different actions to the pandemic state to state, although the government has sought temporary powers to force lockdowns and other restrictive measures on areas with high infection rates.

As it stands, Germany’s state of emergency, which enabled the government to have tighter control over public health issues, is set to lapse on Nov. 25.