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On Saturday, the municipality of Bergen calls a press conference to report on the ongoing spread of the infection. The cases of contagion may be mainly linked to an outbreak among student communities, but in the last week cases with an unknown route of transmission have begun to be detected.
Cases of infection by an unknown route of infection were some of the reasons Norway introduced measures on March 12. At the time, this was said to enter a new phase of the epidemic.
– I laughed
On Friday, health adviser Beate Husa (KrF) told a press conference that she is concerned about a more widespread infection in Bergen. Health Minister Bent Høie believes that cases of unknown transmission route are serious.
– Is seriously. I experience that this is precisely why the Bergen City Council, in collaboration with the National Institute of Public Health, has implemented very strict measures, which are completely in line with the list of measures recommended by the government for such situations, he says Health Minister Bent Høie to Dagbladet.
– Bergen not only works for the people of Bergen, but also for the whole of Norway. I hope that in the next few days it can be shown that this works and that therefore the measures can be relaxed again in Bergen, Høie tells Dagbladet.
On Wednesday, the Bergen municipality stated that it had discovered a handful of infection cases with an unknown route of infection, while the next day it claimed that it had registered 11 new cases without a known route of infection. However, on Friday the infection route of the 21 new cases was known.
Generalized testing
Director Camilla Stoltenberg of the National Institute of Public Health (NIPH) tells Dagbladet that in such situations, thorough testing is important.
– It is always very serious, and we will try to find the ways of contagion. In such situations, generalized testing will be introduced and it will be assessed whether there is reason to try to find out if there are more infections than are known, Stoltenberg tells Dagbladet and continues:
– A lot of things are tested in Bergen now so I think it is possible to get an overview, but it is always disturbing with unknown infection routes.
Health director Bjørn Guldvog explains to Dagbladet that when you know the routes of infection, you have a better chance of quarantining people who have been exposed to the risk of infection.
– It is one of the most important details. This is something that we follow in all outbreaks, that is, if there are many new cases of infection for which the routes of infection are unknown, Guldvog tells Dagbladet.
Infection groups
On Saturday, the municipality of Moss affirms that they have also registered two cases in which they do not currently know the routes of contagion. The outbreak in Sarpsborg and Fredrikstad, on the other hand, has more defined clusters of infection, NTNU professor of social medicine Steinar Westin tells Dagbladet.
– Bergen has the most dramatic infection situation in Norway at the moment. In Sarpsborg and Fredrikstad, there are more defined groups of infection with known close contacts and routes of infection. Whereas in Bergen there is free infection, and this is exactly what is very problematic, says Westin and continues:
– So we don’t know how much spread of infection there is in society and where the infection comes from, and that it becomes more difficult to track the infection to fight the spread of the infection.
– Not unnatural
Prime Minister Erna Solberg tells Dagbladet that it is not uncommon for cases to be discovered without a known route of transmission.
– It is a bit worrying that you do not fully know the routes of infection. At the same time, we know that the unknown routes of infection can be about someone sitting next to someone who has not been sick on a bus and then getting sick, he tells Dagbladet and continues:
– The challenge is that many young people have little or no symptoms. Young people also move much more in society, travel more collectively, and stay in larger meetings with more points of contact. Therefore, it is not surprising that there are cases of unknown transmission route.
Solberg says people ask him questions about restrictions on public transportation.
– People ask me why we should have restrictions on public transport, since you cannot read in the statistics that public transport can contribute to the spread of the infection. But it’s because you don’t know, because we don’t have lists of who is sitting on the bus or standing on the subway.
