On Wednesday, we woke up to another infection record in Norway with almost 8,000 new registered corona cases.
In addition, Assistant Director of Health Espen Nakstad believes that the dark numbers can be as high as 50-60 percent.
Given the contagion situation and the fact that the health authorities now believe we may be at the beginning of this wave, the experts do not believe that we can expect the great relief in measures next week.
To Dagbladet, Minister of Health Ingvild Kjerkol (Labor Party) paints the same picture.
Reason to take this seriously
– May be adjustments
– There are three possibilities now. It is to downgrade, keep the current measures or tighten even more, says Kjerkol and continues:
– I think no one should go and hope that there will be relief from all measures. We hope to drop the last option, but we follow this from day to day.
At the same time, she believes that next week may be an opportunity to adjust the measures, if they see that knowledge has been gained that allows the measures to hit even better.
– The goal is to prevent the spread of infection, Kjerkol emphasizes.
– The burden is great
While it can now be said with increasing certainty that omikron turns out to be less serious, it still causes disease, the Minister of Health points out.
– We are now in the middle of a situation where we unfortunately again set an infection record. With that, we know that admissions will follow in the future. So the purpose is to stop the spread of the new variant. If enough people get sick at the same time, it threatens the functions of society. And it is a government’s responsibility to make sure that does not happen.
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– Emphasizes the seriousness
When asked how worried she herself is about the situation we now see, Kjerkol answers in the words of FHI director Camilla Stoltenberg: that it is their job to be professionally worried.
At the same time, she emphasizes that they constantly make an ongoing assessment of the level of measures and that the current infection rates emphasize the seriousness of the situation.
– Nakstad’s concerns is probably well reasoned. It is expected that we have an underreporting of infection because we come out of a Christmas celebration. At the same time, we still do not have a system for registering self-tests. We hope to eventually get that. But this underlines the seriousness, says Kjerkol and continues:
CONCERNED: Minister of Health Ingvild Kjerkol will remain professionally concerned, but believes the situation in several other countries now underlines the seriousness. Photo: Hans Arne Vedlog / Dagbladet
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– We see the seriousness in other countries, for example in the UK. Here we are facing a wave of infections which, if we take into account what we have learned from the pandemic, will lead to an increased number of hospital admissions. And to an extent that will probably be perceived as dramatic for the British.
Waiting for spring
Now Kjerkol believes it is important that we are able to have control through the winter and emphasizes that we have still not had a large spread of winter flu.
– So we hope that when we get to the spring, and then I would say that March is the first spring month, we hope that we can live with a lower level of action and greater predictability.
She further emphasizes that being able to provide greater predictability regarding measures in the future is something the government gives high priority to.
– That we can have measures that are well discussed in advance, and where the infection situation and capacity in the health service also provides predictability with regard to which measures we implement. That’s what we’re working for. We do not want rapid packages of measures, we want greater predictability. It is an assignment that FHI and the Norwegian Directorate of Health have been given to help us with.
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