The number of coronavirus patients in intensive care units has continued to drop in Belgium, according to the latest official figures published by the Sciensano public health institute on Wednesday.
The total number of coronavirus patients in hospitals on Tuesday was 2,614, down by 146 from the day before.
Of this total, 795 patients were in intensive care units, 29 fewer than the day before. During the previous weeks, the number of patients in ICU stagnated just below 1,000, which is a critical level. Meanwhile, 494 patients were on a ventilator, 16 fewer than the previous day.
Between 28 April and 4 May, an average of 186.4 patients were admitted to the hospital per day, which marks an 11% decrease from the previous week's average, and an important decrease after this number went up yesterday.
A "significant improvement" of the situation in hospitals was originally one of the requirements, alongside seven out of ten people over 65 years old having received their first vaccine dose, for the reopening of terraces on 8 May.
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From 25 April to 1 May, the average number of new coronavirus cases reported per day was 2,953, down by 16% from the 7-day average of the week before.
The total number of confirmed cases in Belgium since the beginning of the pandemic is 999,627.
Over the past two weeks, 393.5 infections were confirmed per 100,000 inhabitants, a 7% decrease compared to the two weeks before.
Belgium’s reproduction rate, meanwhile, stands at 0.92. This means that one person with coronavirus infects on average fewer than one other person and that the epidemic is slowly retreating in Belgium.
From 25 April to 1 May, an average number of 37.4 deaths occurred per day, down by 5.1% from the seven-day average of the week before. This brings the total number of deaths in the country since the beginning of the pandemic to 24,367.
Since the start of the pandemic, a total of 12,694,315 tests have been carried out. Of those tests, an average of 46,913.9 tests were taken per day over the past week, with a positivity rate of 7.2%.
This percentage is down 1.7% since last week's seven-day average while testing increased by 7%.
As of 3 May, a total of 3,133,908 people in Belgium had received at least one dose of the vaccine against Covid-19, or 34.1% of the population aged 18 and older.
In addition, 856,638 people – or 9.3% of the adult population – have been fully vaccinated.
