23 July 2021: Staycation…

23 July 2021: First the good news: the hike in new infections that we saw in recent days, is slowing down. Between 13 and 19 July, an average of 1,406 new coronavirus infections were detected per day, a 19% increase from the average of the previous week. This being said, the reproduction number stands at 1.24. This means the pandemic is still growing. Also, the number of hospital admissions is on the up. The rolling average for daily hospital admissions between 15 and 21 July was 27. It is especially younger people ending up in hospital: 68 percent is younger than 60. Meanwhile, over half of all people living in Belgium (50.3%) have been fully vaccinated. This percentage amounts to almost 5.8 million people, whilst just under 68% of the entire population, have received at least a first dose. The bad news is that we’re starting to see vaccinated people testing positive for SARS-CoV-2. But as worrying as this trend may seem, breakthrough infections — those occurring in vaccinated people — are still relatively uncommonand those that cause serious illness, hospitalization or death even more so. More than 97% of people hospitalized for Covid-19 are unvaccinated. Whether a vaccinated person ever becomes infected depends on the viral load a person is exposed to, how high antibodies spiked after vaccination, how potent those antibodies are against the variant, and whether the level of antibodies in the person’s blood has waned since immunization. All of this argues for an accelerated worldwide vaccination campaign and a booster shot in fall/ early winter – Ghent, Belgium.