With an average of 127.4 daily infections, the number of new coronavirus infections during the period from 8 to 14 July increased by 46% compared to the previous week, indicate on Saturday the SFP Public Health and Sciensano.
For the day of Friday, we would diagnose 261 new cases but these figures have yet to be consolidated and are to be broken down over several days. As a reminder, Monday, there were 216 new cases, Tuesday 185 and Wednesday 202.
The increase is observed in all provinces. A total of 892 additional people were infected between July 8 and July 14. The coronavirus reproduction rate is now 1.064 in Belgium, which means that an average patient with Covid-19 infects a little more than one new person. An epidemic is bound to continue if this rate exceeds 1 and to decrease if it is more than 1, specifies the Institute of Public Health.
The number of new infections has increased in all provinces. In Limburg, the number of infections jumped from 41 new cases the previous week to 89 during the period July 8-14. The province of Antwerp has the most new infections (247, compared to 152 the previous week), followed by West Flanders (138, against 88) and Brussels (118, against 90). In Hainaut, 67 people tested positive, against 55 the previous week. This number goes from 30 to 49 in the province of Liège, from 16 to 20 in the province of Luxembourg, from 13 to 19 in Walloon Brabant and from 8 to 5 in Namur.
Hospitalizations remain stable: on average, 10.3 people were admitted to hospital every day from July 8 to 14, compared with 10.1 the previous week (+ 1%). As of Friday, hospitals were still treating 145 patients, two more than July 10. However, four patients were able to leave intensive care between July 10 and 17. Currently, 28 people are still being treated in these services.
Deaths continue to decline. On average, 2.4 people died every day from coronavirus contamination during the week of July 8 to 14 (-35%). Belgian authorities have recorded 9,800 deaths linked to Covid-19 since the appearance of the disease in our regions.
A total of 63,499 people have tested positive for Covid-19 in Belgium since the start of the pandemic.
Between the beginning of March and July 17, the total number of tests carried out by the laboratories (the national reference center and the other clinical laboratories which carry out the test) amounted to 1,037,803, concludes Sciensano.
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