An average of 83.3 patients suffering from coronavirus were admitted to hospitals each day in the last seven days. The following data has been released by the Sciensano Institute of Public Health on Friday morning.
This marks a 42% increase from the last seven days, and up from average of 73 hospitalisations on Tuesday this week. This figure only includes the number of people hospitalised due to the virus.
The total number of people infected with the virus in hospitals around Belgium has increased from 925 on Tuesday to 1080 (+45% since last week), while 50 patients were being treated in ICU. This number does not include patients admitted with a different condition who later tested positive.
An average of 2,471 new daily infections were noted between 20 and 26 September, up by 27% from the previous week, and nearing the numbers recorded at the beginning of August.
Meanwhile, the average number of tests taken per day increased to around 12,200. The rate of positivity remains stable at 20.9% meaning slightly more than one in five tests has a positive result.
Omicron BA.5 remains the most dominant strain, which accounts for 92.4% of all infections. The strain is said to be no more infectious than the other Omicron subvariants but is effective at circumventing people’s accumulated immunity.
The number of COVID-19 patients that died each day in the same week has jumped to an average of 3.9 (+4%), while the overall number of deaths in Belgium since the beginning of the pandemic is 32,673. This includes people who died of another reason but who were infected, meaning it may be an overestimate of COVID-19 deaths.
