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HIGH NUMBER: 306 crown patients were admitted on Easter night. Here, the treatment of Covid-19 patients takes place in the intensive care unit of the Oslo Rikshospitalet University Hospital. Photo: Jil Yngland
On Easter night, 306 corona-infected patients were admitted to hospitals in Norway. This is an increase of 17 patients over the previous day, and now a new peak in hospital admissions is approaching. Health Director Bjørn Guldvog believes the situation is dire.
On April 1 of last year, 325 patients were admitted with covid-19 in Norwegian hospitals. This is currently the highest number during the entire pandemic.
In the days that followed, the number of hospitals dropped considerably at that time. Now the number goes back up to the same heights.
– The situation is serious and demanding for health personnel in hospitals and municipalities. We have had no higher hospital admissions since April last year, and the number of hospital admissions continues to rise, says NTB’s health director Bjørn Guldvog.
– During Easter, between 25 and 40 new patients have been admitted each day, he adds.
SERIOUS: Health Director Bjørn Guldvog believes the situation is dire. Photo: Lise Åserud
Of the 306 corona patients now admitted, 64 of them receive ventilator therapy. There is one more than the day before, according to the summary of the Norwegian Health Directorate on Saturday.
268 of corona patients are hospitalized in the Health South-East region, 25 are hospitalized in Health West, nine are hospitalized in central Norway and four are hospitalized in Health North.
I hope the measurements lower the numbers
The Ministry of Health and Care Services notes that the variant of the English virus, which is now the dominant one in Norway, is not only more contagious. It also leads to more serious illnesses and therefore more hospital admissions, Secretary of State Saliba Andreas Korkunc (H) tells NTB.
– On March 25, the government introduced stricter national measures to prevent the infection from spreading to areas of the country with little infection. In addition, there are very strict measures in the areas with the highest contagion, such as Oslo and Viken, it says in a written statement.
– It is hoped that the measures will ensure that the number of hospital admissions decreases soon, continues Korkunc.
Infection rates are declining somewhat
And as hospital admissions rise, national infection rates are declining. In the last 24 hours, 640 new corona infections have been registered in the country, 432 less than a week ago. Health director Bjørn Guldvog believes that we may therefore also see the number of crown prisoners declining in the future.
– Those admitted to the hospital have often been infected between one and three weeks before. So we can expect hospitalization numbers to drop somewhat in the next two weeks if infection rates continue to decline, he says.
Chief Physician Preben Aavitsland of the National Institute of Public Health (NIPH) also believes that the high number of hospitalized patients does not mean that the situation is necessarily going in the wrong direction. He emphasizes to NTB that in recent times there has been a decrease in the number of new admissions.
– In week eleven we came to the top with 224 new admissions, in week twelve it was 197. This week we are currently at 104 and we finish probably at around 150, he says.
– The number of new admissions decreases a couple of weeks after the number of new infected decreases. Therefore, it is appropriate that we now see a decrease in the number of hospitalizations, he adds.
Easter factor
Aavitsland also points to the possibility that Easter may have something to do with people staying longer in the hospital.
– It is not so easy to discharge patients at Easter when there is a holiday break in some of the municipal services that will be in charge of monitoring discharged patients, says the superior of FHI.
The decrease in the number of cases of infection may also be related to fewer tests at Easter. But in Bergen, infection rates are on the rise, despite lower testing activity during the Easter holidays, which worries the municipality.
In Oslo, where infection rates have been high recently, the number of new cases is somewhat lower than in recent times. There were 228 new infections on Saturday, 16 below the previous week’s average.
Since February of last year, 97,410 people have been diagnosed with corona infection in this country. At the same time, vaccination is constantly progressing and now almost 700,000 Norwegians have received the first dose of vaccine. Almost 300,000 have also received their second dose.
