16 Poles were among the 79 foreign-born patients admitted to hospitals in Norway last week. 41 percent of corona patients are now born abroad.
It was another gloomy week with new sky-high infection rates, new patient records and a new shutdown. Never before have so many been hospitalized with corona.
The high patient numbers are one of the main arguments for the government partially closing down Norway again.
New figures from FHI show that foreign-born people again dominate patient statistics.
Most unvaccinated people in Norway are now born abroad.
The number of patients for Norwegian-born has been stable over the past two weeks. It is the flow of foreign-born patients that has driven most of the patient growth so far in December.
So many patients are born abroad
79 of the 193 patients admitted to hospital last week were born outside Norway.
16 of them were born in Poland. This means that one in six foreign-born corona patients comes from Poland.
In addition, there were six patients from Eritrea, five from Syria and five from Lithuania. NIPH does not state countries for groups of less than five.
At the same time, the patient flow shows that the number of Norwegian-born patients has remained stable for two weeks.
In the last three weeks, a total of 29 Poles have been hospitalized in Norway with corona.
An notified patient stream?
It has been known throughout the pandemic that the pandemic has hit immigrants much harder.
Many measures have been implemented.
It has not been able to prevent the sharp increase in both infection and the number of patients among foreign-born.
Major campaigns have been carried out, including in Polish.
Both in major media, and on social media where Poles are located. Vaccines have also been offered at workplaces with a lot of foreign labor.
However, it has not managed to prevent the last wave. What is the reason why immigrants are still so overrepresented?
Most are unvaccinated
66 per cent of the foreign-born who have been hospitalized in the last four weeks were unvaccinated.
Among the 97,4000 Poles registered in the National Register of Norway, the proportion of fully vaccinated is only 40 per cent.
In the last two months, on the other hand, only 2,300 more Poles have been fully vaccinated in Norway since 10 October.
On the other hand, the figures from FHI may contain sources of error.
In Poland, as many as 47 percent of the population is fully vaccinated. Why should Poles be far more skeptical of vaccines in Norway than in Poland?
It is both difficult and time-consuming to register vaccines taken abroad here in Norway. Therefore, there is good reason to believe that the proportion of vaccinated is higher than FHI’s figures give the impression.
What are the causes?
In fresh report from FHI points to several possible reasons why the pandemic has hit some immigrant groups so hard.
Travel far more. Foreign-born people travel far more, and are more often in areas with higher infection than Norway.
2. Language and IT. NIPH the foreign-born to a greater extent fall outside both testing, infection tracing and quarantine. There have been major weaknesses in the systems for obtaining interpreters.
3. Falls outside health care. Another explanation is that many immigrants fall outside the Norwegian health system.
4. Weaker compliance with advice. NIPH also believes that immigrants “probably” have had a weaker compliance with both advice and quarantine rules.
5. Social and economic conditions. Immigrants live more centrally, where the infection is greatest. Narrow living conditions, occupation, education and income have had “moderate” significance, according to FHI.
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