Belgium hasn’t been mentioned much here, but they now have the highest number of deaths per head of population as per Worldometer but this may be due to differences in how countries report deaths. They have a total of 4,857 deaths, which is 419 deaths per million of population, just ahead of Spain (409) and Italy (367).
About half of the deaths in Belgium are in aged care facilities.
Belgium is in Western Europe between France and the Netherlands, both also with high death rates.
The Brussels Times: Belgium extends lockdown until 3 May
Belgium will extend its lockdown deadline until 3 May in the fight against the new coronavirus (Covid-19), announced Prime Minister Sophie Wilmès during a press conference on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, the Group of Experts for an Exit Strategy (GEES), which has to ease the country out of the lockdown, handed over its first report to the government. Following that report, and a meeting with Belgium’s National Security Council, joined by the country regions’ Minister-Presidents, Wilmès announced Belgium’s new shutdown deadline, and clarified several other measures.
-The lockdown measures will be extended until 3 May.
-Garden centres and do-it-yourself stores are allowed to reopen, under the same conditions of social distancing as ordinary food stores.
-Residents of residential care centres may receive one visitor, designated in advance, provided that this person has had no symptoms of illness in the last 2 weeks, and that each time this person is the same.
-There will be no mass events, such as summer festivals, until at least 31 August.
Reuters: Mass COVID-19 testing underway at stricken Belgian care homes
Belgium has begun testing more than 210,000 residents and staff at nursing homes, which now account for about half of the coronavirus-related deaths in the country.
Belgium is one of only a few countries in Europe that includes all non-hospitalised people who displayed symptoms of the disease in its daily tally of COVID-19 deaths, even if they had not been confirmed as having had it.
So that may be one reason why their death rate is higher than other countries.
The Brussels Times: Explaining Belgium’s rising infections
The total number reflects all people in Belgium who have been confirmed infected by the virus at some point. Importantly, this includes active cases as well as patients who have since recovered, or died from the consequences of the virus.
This means that the count also includes the first infected Belgian person, who was repatriated from Wuhan at the start of February, and was released from quarantine and considered recovered before the current outbreak even started in Belgium.
Since 15 March, which is when hospitals started regularly reporting their patients and deaths using a uniform system, 7,526 have been discharged and are considered recovered. Additionally, 4,857 deaths have been recorded, according to the FPS Public Health’s figures.
This would bring the number of active confirmed cases in the country at the moment to 22,426. However, not all people with a confirmed infection are admitted to the hospital, and can thus not be included in the “discharged” statistics when they have recovered, leaving the total count of all active cases unclear.
Additionally, not everyone is being tested, and experts have warned that the total number of actual cases is far bigger than the number of confirmed ones. “It is possible that the actual number is ten times higher,” said virologist Marc Van Ranst to VTM News. “This number only shows how many people tested positive,” he added.
Al case totals will obviously be lower than actual cases due to untested and undetected cases.
The population of Belgium is 11.5 million, a bit more than twice the population of New Zealand where we have so far had just 9 deaths. If we had a similar death rate per million that would put us somewhere around 2,000 deaths – which is what we could have had without taking drastic action when we did. Most of our 9 deaths have been patients in rest homes. Old sick people are particularly vulnerable.
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