This country with 11.5 million inhabitants and a high population density has registered 10,001 deaths to date, with 14 in the last 24 hours, and 117,115 positive cases in total, with more than 1,700 in the last 24 hours, indicated the Sciensano public health institute.
The Belgian authorities have adopted since the beginning of the pandemic seven months ago, a wide census of deaths, which include those that occurred in hospitals and nursing homes but also deaths possibly related to the virus, without necessarily having a test. confirm this suspicion.
During the peak of the pandemic in April, Belgium had accounted for more than 250 daily deaths for ten days, with a record 321 on April 8, according to Sciensano data.
The 5,000 dead barrier was broken on April 17.
To complete the current system for tracking contacts through telephone call centers, health authorities today officially announced a mobile application called “Coronalert” and urged Belgians to download it on their mobile phones.
“From a proportion of 15% of users among the population, lives can be saved,” said Axel Legai, director of the ‘strat-up’ Devside who developed the application.
The decrease in the number of contaminations and deaths accelerates “as soon as 20% or 30% of the discharges are exceeded”, he added, citing the work of the American scientist Christopher Fraser.
The application “Coronalert”, which works through the Bluetooth system, “performs a memory-help function by anonymously preventing high-risk contacts from which we do not remember or do not have an identity”, underlines a presentation statement.
The precondition implies that it is installed simultaneously by a patient who has tested positive and the people with whom he has recently crossed.
The daily death toll in Belgium has increased again since the beginning of the month, rising from an average of three to seven or eight in the last few days, and the elderly or people with poor health have become increasingly numerous among the sick.
The elderly in some 1,500 homes in Belgium have been hit hard by the pandemic.
These establishments recorded about half of the deaths, according to official figures. A figure that according to the organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF) of Belgium increases to about two-thirds (64%) if we include residents of nursing homes who died in the hospital, denouncing the situation of end of life “for terrible times ”.
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