The epidemiological outlook in Brussels continues to improve, despite a 24% jump in confirmed novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) infections due to increased testing since last week, according to the Commission Communautaire Commune de Bruxelles (COCOM).
The Commission reported on Friday that the incidence of the virus, i.e. the number of infections for every 100,000 inhabitants, cointinued to drop, going from 295 on 21 May to 273 on 28 May.
The number of PCR and antigen tests conducted in Brussels has increased and is now approaching 44,000 units. Positivity rates – the percentage of confirmed cases among persons tested for the virus – remain stable, going from 5% on 21 May to 4.7% on 28 May.
The R0 value, which is the number of infections caused by a single person, has remained under the threshold of 1, although it increased slightly from 0.93 on 21 May to 0.95 on Friday.
COCOM also disclosed that the Indian variant of the virus has been detected in Brussels Region over the past three weeks. Thus far, 14 cases have been diagnosed. Two sources of infection have been identified, one in a family and the other in a kindergarten school.
For this type of variant, the tracing procedure is reinforced so as to contain its spread as much as possible. Moreover, many laboratories have managed to add the sequencing of this variant to the classic PCR test, which makes detection easier.
As a result, detection time for the Indian variant has gone from 14 to 21 days to the present two to three days.
Hospitalisations have also gone down, plunging from 265 on 21 May to 206 on 27 May, while the number of patients in intensive care went from 98 to 94 during the same period.
As elsewhere in the country, fatalities have also been reduced – from 21 cases on 21 May to 14 cases on 28 May.
The Brussels Times
