22 July 2021: Staycation - A corona proof day at the beach

22 July 2021: Although there is still an increase in the number of people testing positive, this figure is going up slightly less quick than in the previous two weeks. Between 12 and 18 July, an average of 1,351 new coronavirus infections were detected per day, a 26% increase from the average of the previous week. Last Tuesday, a total of 266 people were in hospital as a result of the coronavirus of whom 87 people were being treated in intensive care. The incidence, which indicates the average number of new cases per day per 100,000 inhabitants, is continuing to increase rapidly and is sitting now at 143.4. The reproduction rate of the coronavirus stands at 1.24. The good news is that almost 5.6 million people (60.8% of the adult population in Belgium) have received a second dose of the vaccine and are now considered fully protected. An interesting read was the address of the director-general of the World Health Organisation (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in Tokyo, on the eve of the Olympic Games. He denounced the inequal distribution of the vaccines, saying that in low-income countries, only 1% of people have received at least one dose, compared with more than half of people in high-income countries. He stressed that the longer this discrepancy will persist, the longer the pandemic will drag on, and so will the social and economic turmoil it brings. He compared the pandemic with an inferno saying “if you hose only one part of it, the rest will keep burning. And the embers of one fire can easily spark another even more ferocious blaze somewhere else”. He couldn’t be more right – Walcheren, Zeeland, the Netherlands.