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With new restrictive measures in place since Monday (curfew at dawn and closing of cafes, restaurants and bars), Belgium continues to break records, and the authorities now report more than 13,000 new positive cases for the new coronavirus in the last 24 hours, a new national high since the pandemic began.
With a size similar to that of Portugal, Belgium, which has just over 11 million inhabitants, has had more than 10,500 deaths from covid-19 since the start of the pandemic, a figure higher than neighboring Germany (which has more than 83 million inhabitants) and almost five times higher than Portugal.
In total, Belgium has 250,000 confirmed cases of infection.
Worldwide, with 92 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, Belgium is the second country in the world with the highest mortality rate from covid-19, only behind Peru (which has 105 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants), according to data from the University of the North. The American John Hopkins.
Attributed at the beginning of the pandemic to the fact that all suspected cases are accounted for, the ‘black numbers’ that Belgium presents today are due, according to several virologists, to a huge relaxation of people when restrictions were lifted in the country and also to a poor political management of the pandemic, to which the extravagant political system of the country will not be alien.
Until the new Belgian government ‘came out’ of the May 2019 elections, earlier this month, Belgium broke its own world record by taking nearly two years to form an executive (from a seven-party coalition). , the covid-19 crisis was handled by an interim executive led by Sophie Wilmès with no less than nine health ministers.
In addition to the highly disputed Federal Government Minister of Health, Maggie de Block, who, unsurprisingly, was not reelected, the covid-19 committee meetings have so far had eight other Health “ministers”, representing the different regions. and language communities, with only three Brussels ministers in the Brussels region.
The fragmentation of competences in Belgium is such that, even in the Belgian capital, home to the EU and NATO institutions, the measures can vary when crossing the street, since the 19 communes of the city also have a certain degree of autonomy .
In view of the many criticisms of this administration, one of the first decisions of the new prime minister, Alexander De Croo, was to appoint a “covid commissioner”, but in a country with the complexity of Belgium, even the new working group is seen with suspicion by half of the population, the Francophone -currently the most affected by the covid-19- since the head of government, the new Minister of Health and the commissioner are all Flemish (north) and, in Wallonia (south) , it is feared that the region will be more penalized by the decisions that are taken.
Currently, the big concern in Belgium is the fact that the most recent data points to a second wave that will continue to be devastating, with new Belgian Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke warning on Sunday that the country is “really very close to a ‘tsunami’ ”, that is, a situation in which“ there is no longer control over what is happening ”.
According to the official, the ‘tsunami’ is approaching “dangerously” to the Brussels region (an ‘enclave’ in the center of the country already in Flanders territory), and Wallonia, already described by many as “the new Lombardy” of the Second pandemic wave, after that region of northern Italy was the epicenter of the arrival of the new coronavirus on European territory.
The effects in Brussels are already being felt in the activity of the European institutions, and this week the European Parliament has once again held a ‘virtual’ plenary session – after the assembly has held face-to-face sessions in the Belgian capital in recent months, as an alternative to Strasbourg-, while civil servants’ access to the European Commission (whose president is isolated) and the Council is increasingly limited, especially since the new rules now in force in Belgium impose teleworking in all cases where this is possible.
At a time when authorities are already denying tests to people who do not have symptoms, due to the shortage of kits, Belgium registered in the last 14 days the second highest average incidence rate in Europe, with 932 positives per 100 thousand inhabitants (only behind the 1,066 registered in the Czech Republic).
Some Belgian regions report ‘astronomical’ figures, such as the Brussels and Liège region (in Wallonia), with 1,295 and 1,615 infections per 100,000 inhabitants, respectively, and around one positive case for every four tests carried out.
Another great fear assumed by the Belgian Minister of Health is that the health services lack the capacity to respond.
In the last 24 hours, there were 421 hospital admissions in Belgium, including former Prime Minister Sophie Wilmès, who was admitted to intensive care today, a figure that had not been reached since April 10, having been registered in the last week. an 88% increase in hospitalizations.
“We could have avoided this. Never, but never should we have reached a situation where we have between 10,000 and 12,000 new cases per day,” commented Belgian virologist Marc Van Ranst, today honored by the Royal Flemish Academy of Sciences with an award. to your career. .
According to this expert, the main reason for this second wave of proportions even greater than the first is the fact that people “lower their guard when they should not have done it”, with the false feeling that the worst is over.
Already warning of the probability of a decrease in the number of cases in the coming days due to the new methodologies put in place, Van Ranst leaves an advice: “start looking at the number of hospitalizations”.
While waiting for the effects of the new measures in force since the beginning of this week – it will only be possible for two weeks to analyze their impact – the current dilemma in the country is whether it will be necessary to return to total confinement, a scenario that gains strength with the figures current and that will be inevitable if there is not a strong setback in the short term.
“The situation is serious. Worse than on March 18, when the confinement was decreed” in Belgium, Prime Minister De Croo acknowledged this week on public television RTL.
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