21 July 2021: Staycation – A day at the beach...

21 July 2021: Today, Belgium celebrates its National Day. Even though Belgium became an independent state in 1830, the national holiday dates back to 1831, when Leopold I took the constitutional oath as the first king of the Belgians. Just like last year the pandemic and now also last week’s floods are casting a long shadow over the celebrations. Today’s events are a display to honor our heroes.  Initially, this concerned our heroes in health care, but rescue workers, who took part in operations to tackle the floods, are now also being honored. Meanwhile, the increase in the average number of daily hospitalizations and new cases of coronavirus continues. Between 11 and 17 July an average of 1,345 new coronavirus infections were detected per day, a 33% increase from the average of the previous week. During the same period an average of 23 patients were hospitalized per day. Belgium’s Reproduction number stands at 1.49. There was some more worrying news today. According to a new study the vaccine made by J&J is much less effective against the delta variant of the virus. The new study has not yet been peer reviewed nor published in a scientific journal. But it is consistent with observations that a single dose of the AZ vector vaccine also shows only about 33% efficacy against symptomatic disease caused by the Delta variant. There is still a lot of research to be done to confirm these initial findings but there is one thing you can be sure of…There is light at the end of the tunnel. Yes. But it’s a long tunnel – Walcheren, Zeeland, the Netherlands