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A comparison of the March and April crown numbers with current data shows that the pandemic measures in Switzerland can be rethought. These are the reasons for it.
New daily infections versus number of hospitalizations: Switzerland may issue new Corona interpretation regulations.
In the last week of March, the national situation regarding Corona looked bad. The Federal Office of Public Health (BAG) reported a total of 7362 new infections with 1,154 hospitalizations and 252 deaths in the past seven days. Many feared that the epidemiologists’ horror scenario, according to which Switzerland can expect 30,000 deaths per crown, could become a reality.
It didn’t get that far. Parallel to the measures to contain Sars-CoV-2, the figures fell in April as fast as they had increased: those of new infections, hospitalizations and deaths. Switzerland had taken the curve for now. But how would it continue? The specter of a second wave hovered over the earth like a sword of Damocles.
The number of new infections is not very significant.
The authorities and the population observed the increasing number of new infections during the summer. In the last week of August, the weekly statistics for this parameter once again exceeded the 2000 threshold for the first time, which raised many concerns. Because if the numbers keep increasing at the same rate, we could have as many new infections in October as we did in late March.
However, many things are different today than in the spring during the first wave of pandemics. While the number of new infections is increasing, hospitalizations and deaths remain very low. In the last week of August, only 33 people had to be admitted to the hospital; and 4 crown-related deaths were reported, and all of the deceased were over eighty years old according to the BAG.
It is not known in detail why today, unlike during the first wave of pandemics in March and April, far fewer infected people need hospital care. But there are some plausible reasons that help explain the phenomenon. The number of people screened has increased significantly since the beginning of the pandemic. This also increases the number of corona cases detected (positive test results), according to the motto: If you search more, you will find more. As more “wrong fish” enter the net with a more aggressive testing regimen (negative test results), the positive test rate (based on the total number of tests performed) drops. This can also be observed in Switzerland.
Even more important: in the case of a disease like Covid-19, which occurs in 80 percent of cases with no or mild symptoms, intensive testing (and contact tracing) leads to the detection of more infections. mild that do not require hospital care. It is obvious that these asymptomatic or mildly ill people also die less often than severely ill patients.
Age-dependent analysis of new infections shows very clearly that corona tests are currently identifying more people with mild illnesses than at the start of the pandemic. The proportion of those under 40 years of age who, like healthy children and adolescents, have little to fear from Sars-CoV-2 has increased significantly in recent months, while that of those over 60 years of age has dropped to a quarter part. This is good news from a public health perspective.
These relationships do not speak against the evidence. However, they show that the number of new infections at the beginning of a pandemic, when severe cases of illness are virtually only recognized in the hospital, has a different meaning than in the subsequent course of the outbreak. That said, with the increased testing and finding of infected people in Switzerland in recent months, another development has occurred, not entirely unexpected: the officially calculated Covid-19 death rate has dropped dramatically, which also it is good news. This figure is obtained by dividing the number of deaths by the number of those who tested positive (Case fatality rate) or infected (Infection fatality rate). While the number of cases collected can be trusted in the first case, the number of infected people should be roughly estimated.
Lower mortality also among the elderly
Less expected, but also gratifying, is the fact that the death rate after the first wave of pandemics has not only decreased overall (below one percent). Far fewer deaths are also reported in the group of older people who are particularly at risk. This is probably related to the fact that today, compared to March and April, far fewer older people are infected with the new corona virus.
This suggests that vulnerable people are now better protected from infection by behavioral and protective measures taken than at the start of the pandemic. Additionally, progress has been made in treating severely ill Covid 19 patients, which also reduces mortality. In the case of a pandemic virus like Sars-CoV-2, it is also very possible that its virulence will weaken a bit over time. This has to do with the fact that milder virus strains that do not immediately kill the host have a survival advantage over more aggressive strains.
It should also be assumed that many people with a very limited life expectancy died of Covid-19 in March and April. This is indicated by the so-called excess mortality statistics, which tended to be negative as of May. This means that fewer people died than expected based on many years of experience without a pandemic. The suspicion is that the “missing deaths” due to the Crown occurred a few weeks or months earlier.
All these developments must be taken into account when prescribing and reducing measures to contain Sars-CoV-2. Due to the stable situation, there are quite a few voices in Switzerland who would welcome further relaxation of the strategy against the pandemic. Rather than trying to prevent each case of infection at a high cost, as is the case today, measures that focus more on potential and actual outbreaks might be sufficient in the current situation.
For example, contact tracing should primarily identify and isolate infected people and contacts with a high potential for infection, while people with minor social contacts are epidemiologically insignificant. The length of the quarantine could also possibly be reduced in many cases by a more differentiated assessment.
A question of risk and safety culture
By contrast, in a country like Switzerland, stopping protection measures altogether, as demanded by radical circles, is not a realistic option. As the number of cases increases, so does the risk that the virus will again be smuggled into vulnerable sectors of the population. If that happens, the number of hospitalizations and deaths would rise again with a delay. What medical expert and what politician would be responsible for that?
