A lax summer and a fractured political system have left Belgium facing a second Covid-19 wave potentially as serious as the first, with the health minister warning of a “tsunami”, Reuters reports.

Belgium's more than 10,000 deaths mean the country of 11 million people already has among the world's highest fatality rates per capita.

Like other Western European countries, it sharply curbed infections with a severe lockdown before the summer, only to see caseloads rise again sharply in recent weeks as children returned to school and the weather turned colder.

Belgium's infection rate has risen to more than 800 per 100,000 for the past 14 days, placing it second only to the Czech Republic in Europe and at nearly double the rate in France, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control says.

“We are really close to a tsunami,” Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke said on Sunday, referring in particular to the situation in Brussels and the French-speaking region Wallonia.