Crown in Belgium: high death toll – the Belgian crown puzzle

When Prime Minister Sophie Wilmès announced Wednesday that the curfew will run until May 3, she had at least a small ray of hope for the eleven million Belgians: garden centers and hardware stores can reopen.

The small kingdom has firm control over the crown crisis. There are many deaths: there are now more than 5,000, and therefore more than in Germany. In relation to the number of inhabitants, Belgium even occupies the first place among the states of the area. Spain was overtaken on Thursday, Italy a few days ago.

And while the death toll is falling in the two main countries of southern Europe, Belgium announced a new sad record on Thursday: 417 deaths in 24 hours. Almost 70 percent of deaths were registered in nursing homes.

Since March 17, there have been strict regulations on who can even go outside. The environment, taking the city of Brussels as an example, has so far not been particularly tense.

This may be due to the good weather the Belgians have been enjoying since the start of the blockade, and the fact that the chronically stored roads and highways are now unusually empty for those who have to go somewhere. Alone: ​​the large number of dead remains. The Belgian crown puzzle.

The corona wave started in early March after the annual saffron vacation. Many tourists brought the infection with them from their ski vacation, from northern Italy, Tyrol or France. In the first days of March, cases began to accumulate.

Anyone investigating other causes will have many reasons. Some sound understandable, others less:

• Belgium is in the center of Europe, direct traffic is said to have been much higher before the crisis than in other countries. London, Paris, Amsterdam, Cologne: From Belgium you can be everywhere in less than three hours.

• Air pollution could also be a factor. It is high in Belgium, as in other Corona hot spots, be it Lombardy, Madrid or New York.

• Furthermore, there is a high population density in the eleven million countries.

All of this makes sense, but it also applies to neighboring North Rhine-Westphalia, for example, which is even more densely populated, and only needs to report a fraction of the dead.

The main focus of virologist Steven Van Gucht is the situation in nursing homes. He chairs the Corona National Scientific Committee and has nothing to do with the crisis.

“Hospital deaths have been stable in the past two weeks,” he said last Friday, “but we’ve seen a steady increase in nursing homes since April.” The reason: Belgium appears to often count nursing home deaths among Corona’s dead; even if the cause of death is not clear.

Of the 289 nursing home deaths reported Thursday, only 91 could be clearly classified as crown deaths, and the remaining two-thirds only as possible cases of Covid 19. Belgium may overestimate their deaths, according to Van Gucht.

Either way, the numbers are terrifying. Did government health and policy experts take the virus lightly at first?

Little was tested in Belgium in the first weeks of the pandemic, also because there was little capacity. On March 1, the infectologist Herman Goossens discovered the second Belgian case in the Antwerp hospital: a woman who had previously been in France.

“If we had followed strict government guidelines, we would not have found the second patient,” said Goossens. Only people who came from certain high-risk countries should be tested at this time.

At first, those responsible preached serenity. In the worst case, there will be 13,000 infections and 700 patients in intensive care units, for example, virologist Van Gucht predicted on March 3. “It’s in the area of ​​severe seasonal flu,” he said.

When the virus was diagnosed in a teacher from the city of Wevelgem, the Flemish Region health and care authority advised against closing the school. Meanwhile, the government has to bear the demands.

15 months after the last elections, the country, divided into the Flemish north and south of Wallonia and, therefore, chronically ungovernable, has a sober prime minister with Sophie Wilmès.

So far, you have given the impression that you know what you are doing. She answered the question of the high death toll with reference to the fact that Belgium works “as transparently as possible” and simply reports more cases, “including suspected cases and not excluding patients who suffered from other illnesses,” she says.

Many health ministers identified Maggie de Block as a weak point, a woman without a doubt. At the beginning of the closing measures, the doctor announced that the popular potato chips would, of course, remain open. A little later, most of them closed like the other restaurants.

De Block’s area of ​​responsibility also includes a momentous decision from last year that is catching up with Belgium’s policy these days:

• In late March, it was announced that six million FFP2 respirators had recently been destroyed.

• They were purchased years ago to protect against swine flu.

• They were needed now, but the expiration date had passed.

• No replacement was obtained for cost reasons.

Many hospitals are poorly equipped. After all, there is a comparatively large amount of space: Unlike Bergamo, Madrid, or Alsace, there have been no major bottlenecks in intensive care beds or ventilators.

In some nursing homes, however, the situation is out of control. The extent to which the virus has spread here is shown in the first large-scale corona test at 85 facilities, which was released Wednesday. Every fifth test among older people was positive. The criticism has become correspondingly harsh.

“Politicians initially underestimated the coronavirus and waited for countermeasures for a relatively long time,” says Dirk Rochtus, a political scientist at the Catholic University of Leuven. One reason for this is the weak position of Prime Minister Wilmès until recently:

• After the elections in May 2019, the parties were unable to agree on a coalition capable of a majority.

• The liberal politician finally took office in October as interim head of a provisional government.

• However, the three factions behind Wilmès only have a quarter of the seats in parliament.

That only changed a few weeks ago. Six other groups backed Wilmès and gave them special powers to contain the pandemic. This was the first time that the head of government had a majority in parliament.