Belgium has passed the 500 death mark, announced the crisis center and the FPS Public Health in their daily report. On Monday, 513 deaths were counted, an additional 160 over the weekend, while 11,899 cases of Covid-19 were confirmed by a laboratory test.
The increase in the number of hospitalizations (4,524 in total) and ICU admissions (927) related to the disease has slowed slightly in the past 24 hours. “We are not at the peak (of the epidemic) but at what is called the inflection point. This means that the strength of the epidemic is starting to decrease thanks to the efforts that we have all made these 15 last days“said spokesman Emmanuel André. Clearly, adds his colleague Steven Van Gucht, the number of confirmed cases and hospitalizations remains high and will probably continue to rise in the coming days, but the extent to which this is increasing is decreasing. “It is extremely important to maintain these efforts”added the spokespersons – now but also in the coming weeks. “Just because the curve turns slightly today doesn’t mean it can’t resume if we let go of our efforts.”
For epidemiologist Marius Gilbert (ULB), if the number of new patients in intensive care continues to decrease at the same rate in the coming days – currently, we are at a doubling of admissions in 5 days, against about 2 days at the beginning of the epidemic – we could reach the peak early next week, with a maximum between 1100 and 1200 people in intensive care unit (ICU), before a recession. Currently, 927 of 1,795 USI Covid beds are occupied (53%). To this must be added more than a thousand beds for non-Covid patients. It remains to be seen whether there will not be a rebound effect following the weekend (the figures do not arrive as smoothly) as last week.
The number of deaths, not a surprise
As for the large number of deaths, they are, unfortunately, not a surprise, according to federal spokesmen. “And we are going to have more”, warns Dr. Emmanuel André. “We know that this virus is very dangerous for elderly people, recalls virologist Steven Van Gucht. And in Belgium there are a lot of people over 80, 90 years old. And, in fact, the number of deaths is relatively large. We also see in the statistics that the majority of deaths are among those over 80-90 years of age, a little less among those over 70, and this decreases in the younger age groups. This explains why we see relatively many deaths. It’s not a surprise, but, of course, each death is one too many, and we do everything to keep it as low as possible. This is why all of these measures are in place. “
For the infectiologist Jean-Luc Gala (UCLouvain), this number is “Unfortunately part of the evolution of the pandemic. We know that, over time, a large part of the population will be in contact with the virus and a small proportion of it (the risk group) will develop severe symptoms justifying a It is therefore not surprising that what we are currently seeing is that patients hospitalized in intensive care are people who have multipathologies, of advanced age …. In addition, this type of complication (associated with Covid, but which is not specific to it), called acute respiratory distress syndrome or ARDS, is difficult to treat. If you consider that people who suffer from it are weakened by chronic pathologies, often multiple, and that their age gives them less protection good that a younger person faces this type of infection, the conjunction of all these factors is what underlies the mortality currently observed “. Which is by no means superior to that of other countries.
“Very high quality” of the treatment
Theoretically, these patients could have died in a simple flu epidemic. “But the difference with an influenza epidemic is that these people who we know are at risk are generally vaccinated, just to protect them from these side effects. Here, we do not have this type of protection against coronavirus, so we’re a little bit helpless. ”
This mortality is in any case
“absolutely not linked to the breakdown in efficiency of the Belgian health system”. Even if all the hospitals in the country do not, a priori, have the same means and the same experience as the major academic centers to treat these serious complications – “here, we can no longer afford to treat severe cases only in academic centers, so all hospitals must become more powerful” -, the quality of the treatment “is very high” and “patients, including severe ones, are treated in the best possible way by all hospitals in the country”.
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