Why is corona hitting Wallonia harder now?

A border runs straight through Belgium: a line from west to east. What is above it is Dutch-speaking – except for a small part in the middle, officially bilingual Brussels – and the south is French-speaking. And, the epidemiological maps of the last weeks seem to suggest: the language border also applies to the corona virus.

Wallonia and Brussels perform the worst in all of Europe, it turned out on Friday. The problem is most severe in the Walloon province of Liège. The situation is now worse than during the peak in April. Infected hospital staff are urged to go to work anyway, and a number of patients have been transferred to Germany due to full hospitals. In the last two weeks, Liège had 1,911 infections per 100,000 inhabitants. A stark contrast to the Flemish region that lies just next to it: Limburg, where the number of infections is still around 400.

Also read: Why the Belgian corona figures are so bad

Friday evening the Walloon government decided to make the measures stricter throughout the region, after the federal government issued a modest list earlier in the day. As of this Saturday, a curfew will apply in Wallonia from 10 pm, and physical lessons will no longer be given in higher education.

What goes wrong south of the language border?

First wave

What has not helped is the course of the first wave, explains biostatistician Geert Molenberghs on the phone. “Relatively speaking, Wallonia was less affected then, the hotspots were in Flanders.” According to Molenberghs, it fueled less careful handling of the virus, including at universities. That would also explain why Limburg, which was hit so hard during the first wave, scores so much better for the time being.

But the public discourse in recent months in French-speaking Belgium has not helped either, thinks microbiologist Emmanuel André. “Citizens’ motivation during this epidemic is evolving very quickly. The enormous amount of information that circulates plays an important role in this. ”

French-speaking politicians have advocated a conservative line from the start of the corona crisis. They looked at strict France with a slanted eye and often wanted stricter measures than their Flemish compatriots. But when the figures turned out relatively well there, opposing views gained momentum.

Molenberghs calls it the ‘prevention paradox’. “Precisely because we are successful, people start to wonder whether there is a problem.”

For example, Pierre-François Laterre, head of intensive care in a Brussels hospital, declared in French-language media that there would be group immunity. Internist Jean-Luc Gala, who specializes in infectious diseases, repeated over and over again that the measures were “absurd”. And that just when the infections increased sharply due to returning travelers and reopened schools, and while the motivation to follow measures was already declining.

In a country where the parts of the country each have their own media and public debate and contact between speakers of other languages ​​is generally low, a significant difference could arise between north and south. Yet Emmanuel André does not want to point the finger too much. It “is part of an epidemic” that the number of infections fluctuates constantly, also per region, according to the microbiologist.

Differences

In a country where more attention is paid to the differences than to the similarities between the two parts of the country, it is tempting to look for explanations in cultural differences around the language border. In Flanders, there is now talk of laxity in the other part of the country and the ‘Latin’ manners in the south. But in July, infections in Antwerp increased rapidly, while they lagged behind in the rest of the country.

When the federal government reduced the number of close contacts for the whole of Belgium, media in the French-speaking part turned the hobbyhorse of the Flemish nationalists once for a change: “Wallonia pays for Flanders”, was the front pages. “Why do we have to pay for the laxity in the north?”

There is little point in focusing on regional differences, according to epidemiologist Brecht Devleesschauwer. He mainly sees “chance effects”. For example, in the higher Walloon and Brussels figures it may also have played a role that at the beginning of the second wave the virus spread mainly in larger cities and poorer areas, where households are larger and houses smaller. The academic year in Wallonia also started a week earlier.

The most important message to him is that it “actually not going well everywhere at the moment”. “We are now even seeing the largest increase in Flanders,” said Devleesschauwer.

Microbiologist André agrees: “All indications are now red in Wallonia and Brussels, but Flanders is just heading in the same direction.” The stricter measures that have been announced in recent weeks may change that, he hopes. But the situation is “alarming” in all parts of the country.

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