6500 injuries in one day. Who gets infected and where? Statistician Bart Messauer explains it

On Monday, nearly 6,500 infections were recorded in a single day. How serious is such a daily figure, could it not just be a stranger?

“Daily numbers are always higher on Monday than on other days, because many people are waiting until the end of the week to get tested. So Tuesday’s number is likely to be a little lower again. But 6,500 cases on Monday are in line with the trend towards a 50 percent increase. percent per week. On average, we now have about 3,250 confirmed infections per day, so in a week that could be just under 5,000 at the current growth rate.”

Don’t we just test more, so that we also discover more positive cases?

“In reality, more are being tested, but only 13 percent more are being tested. If positive tests increase by 50 percent, the explanation just isn’t there. The increased positivity rate, now at 6.8%, also indicates this. So, that’s an average that’s always a little late: the past few days have shown outliers of up to 8.8 percent.”

At what ages does it increase the most, and do most injuries occur now?

“We are seeing roughly the same increases at all ages, but in terms of both absolute and proportional numbers, most infections currently occur in people aged 10-19. Children aged 0-9 recorded the largest increase of 80 percent. They Now in the highest numbers for the entire pandemic, but that may also be due to the broader testing policy in schools. During last year’s heavy fall spell, not much testing was done on young children.”

“We continue to see the lowest infection rate among people over the age of 60: thus, the lowest number of infections are detected among them.”

Are there certain areas that appeared?

West Flanders and Limburg have also seen the largest increase for some time, but both provinces have been at the lowest in terms of infections until recently. In that sense, they are now catching up with the rest of the country. Brussels and Liege, until recently, the hardest-hit regions, are still seeing the slowest increases, although already in Liege it is increasing by 22 per cent per week, and 38 per cent in Liege.”

Wallon Brabant also took the lead from Brussels in terms of injury. More than 550 infections per 100,000 population have been added in the past two weeks. In Brussels now 494.”

Hospital admissions are also rising sharply. I’ve shared a chart on Twitter that shows a very strong potential increase in the coming days and weeks, but will it really come true?

“To be clear, this was just a projection of the current increase of about 50 per cent per week, extended into the future. This is by no means a predictive model, but it shows how quickly we can run into problems in hospitals again at the current rate. Yesterday, for example, there were 130 registrations in one day.”

On the other hand, the increase in the number of hospitals does not mean that intensive care units will fill up as quickly as during previous waves. During the third wave, for example, many patients were admitted to intensive care as a percentage, but thanks to vaccinations, this time it is quite possible that many hospitalizations will be shorter or less dangerous.”