Number of COVID-19 patients in Belgian hospitals falls below 2,000

During the week from 7 to 13 May an average of 154 patients with COVID-19 were hospitalised in Belgium each day. This is a fall of 10% on the 7-day average for the previous week. On Thursday 13 May the country’s hospitals reported 142 new admissions of patients with COVID-19. 227 patients were discharged. This brings the total number of patients with COVID-19 that are being cared for in Belgian hospitals to 1,921, a fall of 20% on last Friday’s figures. Of those hospitalised 647 are on intensive care wards (-13%). 387 patients are on ventilators.

Meanwhile, the daily death toll of people with COVID-19 is also down. During the week from 4 to 10 May an average of 35 people with the virus died each day, a fall of 6.2% on the figures from the previous week. So far 24,645 people with COVID-19 have died in Belgium.

The number of people testing positive for coronavirus is also down. During the week from 4 to 10 May an average of 2,852 people tested positive for coronavirus each day, a fall of 4% on the previous week. Between 4 and 10 May an average of 51,900 people were tested for coronavirus each day. This is 9% more than during the previous week.

Of those tested, 6.3% tested positive for the virus, a fall of 0.8 percentage points on the previous week. However, this is still way above the threshold of 5% positivity above which the WHO describes an epidemic as “giving cause for concern”.

The basic reproductive rate (R0) for coronavirus in Belgium currently stands at 0.93. This means that every 100 that have the virus infect a further 93 others.

On Wednesday 12 May (the latest date for which figures are available 3,763,886 people had received their first shot of coronavirus vaccine. This is 41% of the adult population. Of these 1,140,702 have received their second dose and are fully immunised against coronavirus.