FHI has now registered the highest infection rates Norway has had, but the number of new admissions may have leveled off.
On Tuesday, 4,045 new cases of infection were registered in Norway. This is the highest number of days through the pandemic, as the record last week was due to operational problems in the registration.
Now that the figures for last week are starting to clear, a record is also being drawn there:
Never before have so many infected people been registered as last week (both if you place the cases on the day they were registered and the day the sample was taken).
And Oslo has once again risen as the county with the highest registered infection pressure:
– It shows that we are in a season where we are more indoors and at the same time have more contact with each other. Then more people become infected and the trend has been increasing for quite a few weeks now, says assistant health director Espen Rostrup Nakstad to VG.
However, because there have been major changes in the test strategy this autumn, including self-tests and mass testing, FHI’s clear message is that infection rates are not comparable over time. That it is now more important to keep track of the number of inpatients.
And the large growth in infection rates has not led to an equally large increase in admissions.
– The increase in the number of hospitalized is far from as high as the number of infected, said Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre (Labor) when the government on Tuesday introduced new austerity measures.
– We can tolerate more infections than before, but we must have control, he emphasized.
The number of new corona admissions to hospitals increased sharply this autumn. But in the last two weeks it has gone down or been fairly stable:
– Admissions have not risen as much as infection rates in recent weeks. This may be due to increased test activity and the effect of the third dose on those over 65, says Nakstad.
– But there are 250 inpatients, so it has crept up a bit as well. And 60 in intensive care is a fairly high number, says Nakstad.
FHI pointed out last week that there seems to have been a flattening in new admissions and transfers to the intensive care unit for covid-19 in recent weeks, but that it is too early to determine whether this was a lasting trend.
On Tuesday, there were 246 corona patients in Norwegian hospitals, which is high, but not as high as the waves in April 2020 and April 2021, where the registered infection was lower:
At the same time, there has been an increase in the number of weekly deaths – which is now on a par with the first wave in March / April 2021:
– There has been a clear increase in deaths in recent weeks, Nakstad emphasizes.
– There are many covid patients admitted to Norwegian nursing homes and these are not included in the statistics on hospital admissions, he points out.
On Wednesday afternoon, a new weekly report from FHI will be published, with more data on who has been admitted now.
The message from last week was:
– It is mainly unvaccinated adults and the elderly with risk conditions who are admitted to hospital. Now 32 percent of older people over the age of 65 have received their third dose, and we see the first signs of a lower incidence of hospitalization with these with three doses compared to peers with only two doses, wrote FHI 24. november.
– It is still the groups that stand out, but there is reason to believe that the proportion of fully vaccinated in hospitals will be lower as more people are third-dose vaccinated. We have seen signs of this in several other countries, where the unvaccinated now dominate among the inpatients, Nakstad adds.
The clearly highest infection pressure is still registered among the youngest, who have a lower risk of a serious course – and are to a greater extent unvaccinated:
