Corona in Belgium | Most indicators decrease slightly

But the good news is that most of the other indices will fall again on Monday. An average of 234 people were hospitalized every day between April 11 and April 17. This is a decrease of eight percent. There are now 3,000 COVID patients in hospitals, a decrease of three percent. The government announced this week that this number must be below 500 before mitigation is possible.

Over the past seven days, an average of 3,529 people have contracted the virus daily, 1 percent less than the previous week. The increase is still somewhat biased compared to Easter week. The number of tests ended at 40,700, a decrease of 10 percent.

The positive rate was 9.9 percent, close to the highest level since the end of November. So out of the 100 people tested, 10 of them tested positive, while the goal is to have the number below five. A high percentage of positivity indicates a wide spread of the virus. Health Minister Frank Vandenbroek Calls for more rapid tests As an additional line of defense, through preventive checks in companies and schools.

On average, 39 people died from Corona infection, a decrease of 10 percent. Since the start of the epidemic, 23,747 people have died from Covid.

By summer, the Belgian government wants to vaccinate 70 percent of the population – the minimum immunity for the group. You currently have it 2.3 million Belgians The first vaccine Owns, They represent a fifth of the population. In the coming months, supplier Pfizer / BioNTech will fundamentally fail Births are still steeply high.

The impact of the vaccination campaign is also evident in the statistics. From mid-February, a clear decrease in the number of deaths among the elderly can be observed.

The vaccination campaign is the highway to freedom. Meanwhile, a comprehensive testing strategy should help keep the virus under control. During the past week the average has been calculated 40.700 tests in a day. This is much lower than it was before the Easter holidays.

We can conclude that the virus is spreading more than the percentage of positive tests, the percentage of positivity. This rises to 10 percent, twice the 5 percent threshold that the World Health Organization considers safe.

Most of the new infections were recorded in the provinces of Hainaut, Antwerp and Liege. And in recent weeks, we’ve seen a spike in infections among people under the age of 18, who are now being tested often. Infections are declining among people over the age of 80, which may have something to do with vaccinations in that group.

The situation in the hospitals is somewhat better than it was in April and November. In addition, hospitals are now receiving Covid patients much faster than they were in March and April 2020, when hospital beds filled at a very rapid rate. With Strict insurance The government has been trying for several months An imminent surprise To prevent. Hospitals are gone To stage 1b of the distribution plan: Half of the ICU beds are kept free for Coronavirus patients, which could have an impact on non-urgent care.

However, the number of patients in the hospital decreased less rapidly during the second wave than after the first. which has Various possible causesThe virus is seasonal, the number of people over the age of 80 who have been admitted is higher and people are staying in bed longer because hospitals have learned that they can still pull some patients there.

Over the past seven days, an average of 39 people have died from illness every day. This brings The number of people killed since the start of the epidemic At 23,747 overall, we found Covid-19 to be more deadly in older people. More than half of the dead were 85 years of age or older.

Not all deaths end in Corona statistics. To know the true impact of the Coronavirus in Belgium and to be able to compare it with that in other countries, the excess death rate is a more correct indicator. This is the number of excess deaths compared to the average of previous years.

During the first week of April 2020, at the height of the first wave, more than double the number of people who died in previous years died. The largest toll was in people over the age of 85, the age group at which more people have died since the spring than in other years. In the group up to the age of 24, fewer people died almost consistently than expected in 2020, in part due to the decrease in the number of road accidents.