600 days of plague
Well, I had said that I thought I might stop this series of ten-day updates once we hit the 600-day mark (counting from the first day of full lockdown last year). But we are really not out of the woods yet, so I think I'll continue for a bit longer.
The worrying increase in the COVID numbers in Belgium has slowed, but not stopped. (There was a welcome day-on-day decline in the reported weekly average number of new infections between Thursday and Friday last week, but I tend to feel that was because of disruptions to the reporting cycle caused by the 1 November public holiday, as it was back up again on Saturday. Next Thursday, 11 November, is another public holiday, and a lot of people (including me) are taking the Friday off as well, so it may be a couple of weeks before the Sciensano updates get back in sync.
It's not great. The weekly infections rate for 25-31 October was 7758, which means 54,306 in total, which is about 0.5% of all Belgians. The peak last year was 15967, just over twice as high; at that point hospitalisations were 3.3 times higher than now, ICU occupancy 3x higher and deaths 5x higher. So the vaccinations have made a difference. I expect that the current wave's peak will not reach 10,000.
Meanwhile I wonder if targeted advertising has medical news for me that I did not expect.
In case you missed it, here's my post about the amazing stucco ceilings of Jean-Christian Hansch at the Château de Modave, way off the other side of Huy, which we visited on the Toussaint/Allerheiligen holiday on Monday:
Planning another visit to the UK at the end of next week; so the next update in this sequence should be after I get back.
The worrying increase in the COVID numbers in Belgium has slowed, but not stopped. (There was a welcome day-on-day decline in the reported weekly average number of new infections between Thursday and Friday last week, but I tend to feel that was because of disruptions to the reporting cycle caused by the 1 November public holiday, as it was back up again on Saturday. Next Thursday, 11 November, is another public holiday, and a lot of people (including me) are taking the Friday off as well, so it may be a couple of weeks before the Sciensano updates get back in sync.
It's not great. The weekly infections rate for 25-31 October was 7758, which means 54,306 in total, which is about 0.5% of all Belgians. The peak last year was 15967, just over twice as high; at that point hospitalisations were 3.3 times higher than now, ICU occupancy 3x higher and deaths 5x higher. So the vaccinations have made a difference. I expect that the current wave's peak will not reach 10,000.
Meanwhile I wonder if targeted advertising has medical news for me that I did not expect.
In case you missed it, here's my post about the amazing stucco ceilings of Jean-Christian Hansch at the Château de Modave, way off the other side of Huy, which we visited on the Toussaint/Allerheiligen holiday on Monday:
Planning another visit to the UK at the end of next week; so the next update in this sequence should be after I get back.