Coronavirus hospital admissions in Europe are still at only a fraction of the level they were in March and April, despite warnings from officials that a second wave is rolling across the continent.
Countries such as France, Spain and Belgium, which are now seeing hospital patient numbers rise again, are recording far fewer admissions than at the peak of the pandemic.
UK health officials including Health Secretary Matt Hancock have warned of a ‘second wave rolling across Europe’ and told Brits to act now to stop a resurgence here.
Data shows, however, that although hospital admissions are rising around Europe they are still low, despite thousands of cases being declared each day.
In France, for example, the weekly rate of admission to hospital is now two per 100,000, down from more than 35 at the peak of the outbreak in March. This is despite the country counting record numbers of infections in recent weeks.
And in Spain, where the admission rate was one per 100,000 in June, hospitalisations hit four per 100,000 at the end of August – still a far cry from the 50 per 100,000 being admitted in early April.
Mr Hancock claimed today that Spain’s hospitalisations had ‘risen 15 times since mid-July’. But data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control shows admissions rose by four times in that period.
Professor Paul Hunter, an epidemiologist from the University of East Anglia, told MailOnline that in the science community ‘nobody expects hospital admissions and death rates to stay flat for more than two weeks’.
But the kinds of people ending up in hospital is crucial for judging the severity of the outbreak — younger people are significantly less likely to die than the elderly.
Professor Hunter said: ‘Most people would expect that in two, three, four, weeks we’ll see an obvious increase in both in hospitalisations and deaths.’
Professor Keith Neal, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Nottingham, added that rising cases in Spain ‘hasn’t really been reflected in the hospitalisations’, so outbreaks may not follow the same trajectory that they did the first time round.
Scientists agreed that cases and, as a result, hospitalisations and deaths, would rise when lockdown was lifted. The Government’s task now is to keep them under control.
Although poor testing during the worst of the outbreak meant not all cases were picked up, whereas most of them likely are now, experts have also said many infections now are among younger people who are less likely to get seriously ill.
Coronavirus hospital admissions could start to rise in the UK in three weeks, data from other European countries suggests. When Spain, France and Belgium hit 18 cases per 100,000 (which the UK did on Sunday) they then saw admissions increase by up to four-fold
But European nations are only seeing a fraction of the weekly admissions they had during the peak of the pandemic, raising questions about whether it can really constitute a ‘second wave’
In late March, thousands of people were being admitted to French hospitals per day, and the weekly hospitalisation rate was 35 per 100,000. Now, about 800 people are being taken to hospitals across the Channel every week, giving it a rate of about two per 100,000
Spain had a Covid hospitalisation rate of four per 100,000 in late August, up from one per 100,000 a month prior. While admissions technically quadrupled, they were still miles away from the level seen in late March, when 50 per 100,000 people were being hospitalised a week
In August the hospitalisation rate in Belgium doubled from one two, which is not even a tenth of the worst levels seen in April (30 per 100,000)
Hospitalisation rates remain low and falling in the UK, from a peak of more than 30 per 100,000 people to fewer than one per 100,000, but officials fear they will rise again soon
Cases per capita in Britain are now higher than 20 per 100,000 people, a level at which UK officials consider putting foreign countries on a quarantine list because they are deemed to have lost control of the virus.
It comes after nearly 3,000 people tested positive for two days in a row on Sunday and Monday and marks a near threefold rise from last week’s rate of 12.8 per 100,000.
British hospital admissions have remained stable, however, with just one in 100,000 people currently needing medical care for Covid-19 infection.
It represents a fraction of the approximately 32 people per 100,000 who were taken to hospital with the virus at the peak of the UK’s crisis in mid-April.
There are currently about 800 patients in British hospitals fighting Covid-19, compared to 20,000 six months ago.
Data from Spain, Belgium and France shows when case rates were at a similar level to the UK’s, admissions then spiked over the following three weeks.
HOW COVID-19 HOSPITAL ADMISSION RATES HAVE CHANGED
UK
APRIL: 32 PER 100,000
JUNE: 1 PER 100,000
SEPTEMBER:
Link nguồn : https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8708967/Covid-19-hospitalisations-Europe-fraction-pandemics-peak.html
