He does not have a good Wednesday morning, he says.
– It’s very serious. It shows how necessary it was to introduce measures at the national level and very strict measures in those areas with increased infection, says Høie to Dagbladet.
Last week, the government presented concrete plans for new national measures, if the spread of infection does not decrease. On Wednesday at 2 pm, Høie will hold a press conference on the infection situation.
He does not rule out that there will be new measures.
– It has not been decided yet, but I can not rule out that things will happen during the day today. It is the infection situation and the assessments we receive from NIPH and the Norwegian Directorate of Health that will be decisive for it. It is early in the day yet, and no one knows what the day will bring, says the Minister of Health.
We must do this now
Testing and tracking under pressure
Two days ago, Assistant Director of Health in the Norwegian Directorate of Health Espen Rostrup Nakstad told Dagbladet that the test progress in Oslo is so great that the TISK strategy is approaching the breaking point. Several municipalities in Viken also have high pressure on testing and tracking.
– Is TISK at the breaking point in Oslo and Viken?
– We experience that some municipalities have challenges in being able to handle testing and tracking, due to a combination of increased infection and that many have still had many close contacts. Therefore, the measures are important and correct. It helps reduce infection. Therefore, I agree with the assessment that the City Council of Oslo has made on the school area, because it is an area that contributes when there is so much infection in Oslo, says Høie and continues:
– There is a very large load on testing and tracking. Then it is unfortunately the case that the more contagious variant leads to more hospital admissions and more people become seriously ill. Several hospitals are now implementing plans to receive more patients, increasing preparedness and unfortunately postponing operations.
view more
–
– Not there now
In February, Høie said in the Storting that it will be experienced almost as one war situation in the hospitals if we get into a situation where the government’s emergency plan must be used. It is possible to scale up to 1200 intensive care places, but Høie pointed out that these places will then be operated by nurses without specialist training.
– Is such a situation approaching?
-No, we’m not there now. The ordinary way to handle this is to scale up capacity and reduce planned activity. But it is still the case that the intensive care provided is of good and ordinary quality. What I described by this term was a situation where the staffing and content of the intensive care units is approaching the upper limit for how many can receive treatment. We do everything we can to avoid getting there, Høie answers.
view more
– The strongest tools
In addition to the national infection record, the capital also has a new record. 495 new corona infections have been registered in Oslo in the last 24 hours.
The number is 128 higher than one day earlier, when there was also a new peak of infection.
– The infection rates from yesterday are very high. It shows the seriousness and how aggressive the British, mutated variant of the virus is. The virus spreads much faster than previous virus variants, and since the British variant now accounts for 90 percent of the positive corona samples in Oslo, we still expect very high infection rates this week, says City Councilor Raymond Johansen to Dagbladet Wednesday morning.
After a rising infection trend in the capital for several weeks, he had to tighten the measures in the already corona-closed capital further on Monday night. Among other things, it is now forbidden to have more than two visitors in private homes.
–
