“The burden in hospitals is very heavy at the moment,” says Van Gucht. “For example, the number of patients in intensive care will be 850 to 1,000 within the week. The number of new hospital admissions is slowing down: there are now an average of 318 per day, compared to 305 last week. That is only 3 percent more. We may therefore be reaching a peak there, although we do expect hospital occupancy to increase slightly in the coming days. We expect a similar delay in intensive care. It is unclear whether we can expect a rapid decline after that, or whether we will remain on a high plateau. Thanks to the vaccinations, the number of hospital admissions compared to the number of infections remains a lot lower than in previous waves, especially in intensive care.”
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“The number of infections is also still increasing,” says Van Gucht, “but the weekly increase is getting smaller and smaller. Monday and Tuesday it was even lower than a week earlier. It seems that Monday, November 22, may be the peak of the fourth wave, with 25,574 infections. That is the highest number since the start of the pandemic.
“The number of deaths is also increasing: last week that was an average of 44 people per day, compared to 36 a week earlier. That is an increase of 33 percent, especially in Flanders. The average age of deceased Covid patients is 77 years.
Differences in age and region
“We see very clear differences in age,” says Van Gucht. “The figures are only increasing among children (+37%) and teenagers (+19%), and to a lesser extent among those in their thirties and forties. The number of infections is already falling in all other age groups. The situation in schools therefore remains difficult.”
“We see a regional turnaround: we still see the largest increase in infections in Brussels (+18%), in Flanders it is the slowest (+3%), in West Flanders there is even a slight decrease. Although that is relative, because the infection rate in Brussels was much lower than in Flanders, where it was very high.”
Omicron variant
“We currently mainly see infections with the delta variant in Belgium, just like in the rest of Europe: it concerns almost all infections, 99.6 percent. The other 0.4 are older variants. The new omikron variant is still very rare in Belgium: we are aware of 4 cases, from 2 clusters with links to travel to Egypt/Turkey and South Africa respectively. There are also 10 possible cases still under investigation. But we expect more cases in the coming days anyway.”
“I must emphasize that very little is known about the properties of the omikron variant. We don’t know if it’s more contagious, or if it causes a different disease, or how well the vaccines protect against it. That is perfectly normal: it takes weeks to months of study. But if it turns out that the omikron variant would generate fewer antibodies in vaccinated patients, that does not mean that the vaccines no longer work against it. Our immune system also relies on T cells to ward off viruses, which are much more difficult to avoid due to new variants.”
“Variants come and variants go: we expect that omikron will eventually replace delta. But that is virologically completely normal. That does not change the approach to this crisis: keeping your distance, ventilation, mouth masks!”
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