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Fewer people live in Belgium than in Hungary, but many more have lost their lives in the coronavirus epidemic. In the country with a population of 11.5 million, more than 7,700 people died of Covid-19 disease, while in Hungary the virus claimed the lives of twenty people.
In terms of population, they have the highest mortality rate, 665 deaths per million people, which is 35. In the case of Hungary, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, also mentioned this figure when he tried to show that The United States is effectively managing the epidemic.
The numbers could easily lead to a wrong conclusion, said virology professor Steven Van Gucht, a government spokesman. This is because the deaths attributable to the coronavirus are calculated differently than the rest of the world. These also include cases in which someone who has not been confirmed to be infected with a coronavirus dies in a nursing home.
53 percent of their coronavirus deaths occurred in nursing homes
The deciding factor in the Belgian calculation method is whether there was a confirmed case of coronavirus in a given nursing home. If, for example, there are two cases tested at the institution and a week later ten die with similar symptoms but the coronavirus is not detected, then the latter are also classified as viral deaths.
They are popular in nursing homes in Belgium, with 71 out of every thousand people over the age of 65 living in such institutions, and only Luxembourg and the Netherlands have higher rates in Europe. In Poland, 12 out of a thousand older people live in their homes.
The Belgians also acknowledged that they did not respond well at the beginning of the epidemic, and that the protective equipment for staff working in nursing homes was poor, allowing the virus to spread rapidly.
(BBC)
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