Europe seeing uptick in cases and hospitalizations

Yes, Deltacron has arrived!

I'm traveling to the UK in May and Portugal/Spain in late June/July. I'm fully prepared for whatever COVID may bring. The worst case is what happened to me in Mexico in late December. I got COVID in a foreign country and had to stay 5 extra days. (Even if I had to stay longer, I can work remotely and it's not the end of the world.).
COVID will be around for a while. If exposure to COVID is going to end your life (or your livelihood), then you probably shouldn't travel for the foreseeable future.
Just my two cents.

I think most health authorities in most countries have warned that there would be an uptick in Covid cases, hospitalizations, etc as health restrictions eased or were done away with. No surprise there. And they've also warned that Covid is not gone, and it's only a matter of time before a new variant of concern crops up. Do what you will with that.

Personally, I'm planning on more cases as restrictions are eased and thinking about how to "jump". I've got nearly two months to see what happens. I've told my employer that for the two weeks before my trip, I will probably work from home to isolate. I've got a Plan Q to work remotely if I get quarantined before I can fly back. I think these days, we just make contingency plans and figure our best way out. If it takes a second booster, I'm ready for that step. If it's cold, we pack a coat. If cases are high, we wear a mask.

Yes, Deltacron has arrived!

In the UK Omicron still makes up 99.9 % of Covid-19 cases so I wouldn't suggest that Deltacron is the reason for the increase in cases. It was widely accepted that cases, hospitalisations and deaths would increase following the removal of all Covid restrictions. What is more important is whether there is a plateau in the cases in the forthcoming weeks or whether the numbers continue rising.

Denmark at least had a rise around the end of February but seems to be going down again now.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/denmark/

They have high vaccination and booster rates but they famously got rid of most restrictions.

Its not deltacron - its a variant of Omicron called BA-2 which has been around for a few months. Its more transmissible than the original Omicron but probably not more deadly. NZ is in the middle of an outbreak at the moment mainly the BA2 variant - we are getting more hospital admissions than expected - but not more in ICU - yet - we're probably a few weeks off peak-hospitalization.

From our Director General of Health about 30min ago

Bloomfield said the BA.2 variant had a "transmission advantage" but there was no evidence to indicate it was more severe than the >earlier BA.1 variant.
Bloomfield said the peak may have been higher in Auckland because there was a predominance of the sub-variant BA.2.
Areas that had a big initial Omicron outbreak were also getting a second wave with the BA.2 subvariant, he said.

As others have said, this is not unexpected, and it sounds like the local authorities expected a rise in cases.

Honestly, I think the biggest threat to travel for Americans would be another big surge or new variant of concern spreading here and prompting European countries to bar non-essential travel from the U.S. Omicron hit right after we booked our May trip and at least some of our destinations (e.g. Germany) did that...for a couple of months.

Cases are rising in the northeast USA according to the national news tonight. I am not at all surprised. When the state and local health departments, along with the CDC get rid of mask mandates but strongly recommends masking indoors and people stop wearing masks, there ya go! Let’s hope we don’t have a big spike or a variant of concern develops.