Geert Molenberghs cautiously positive: “Promising examples of countries ahead of us” | Coronavirus what you need to know

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The consequences of the omikron variant all appear to be better than predicted. Geert Molenberghs (UHasselt, KULeuven) sees two reasons for this. Firstly, the less sickening character of omikron, where nature lends us a hand. And second, the booster campaign. “We see that in countries where the booster campaign is going well, it helps keep things under control,” explains the biostatistician. “A booster shot reduces the risk of hospitalization by a factor of 10, and the risk of ending up in intensive care by a factor of 20.”

Molenberghs does say that we no longer have a complete overview of the infections with the corona virus. “If the increase were even more sharp, we would not be able to determine it because we are reaching the limits of our testing capacity.” In addition, our test policy has also been adjusted. “The fraction of people who have had a high-risk contact is no longer systematically tested,” explains Molenberghs. “We do get a glimpse of that through the positivity ratio, which has already risen above 50 percent among people with symptoms, an unprecedented high.” The global positivity ratio is around 30 percent. That means about 1 in 3 people who get tested are positive.

The biostatistician adds that “at no point in the epidemic are we establishing exact infection rates, that’s always an underestimate.” He does expect that before the end of the month we will see whether there is a stable decline. He assumes that we will not reach the predicted high figures of 400 to 1,300 new hospital admissions per day.

He is optimistic because all numbers in countries ahead of us are falling. “We will have to see whether there will be no annoyance in hospital admissions, but we also see that hospitalizations are declining in American states such as New York and New Jersey. There are some hopeful examples.”