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More Covid-19 patients in intensive care than during Sweden's second wave

TT/The Local
TT/The Local - [email protected]
More Covid-19 patients in intensive care than during Sweden's second wave
File photo of the intensive care ward at Södertälje Hospital in spring 2020. Photo: Staffan Löwstedt/SvD/TT

More Covid-19 patients are currently being treated in intensive care in Sweden than at any other point in 2021, according to the latest figures from Swedish authorities.

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A total of 391 Covid-19 patients received intensive care treatment in Sweden on Monday, according to the Intensive Care Register’s latest data.

That’s approximately a 65 percent increase since the start of March, and a higher number than the peak of the second wave which hit Swedish intensive care the hardest in early January. At the time, 389 people received intensive care for Covid-19 on the busiest day.

They are still fewer than during the first wave, at the end of April 2020, when Sweden’s intensive care wards treated as many as 558 Covid-19 patients on the same day.

More than 80 percent of the patients have some type of underlying health condition that puts them at higher risk of serious illness, and 70 percent are men, the data show.

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On average, a person who requires intensive care for Covid-19 gets admitted to an intensive care ward around 10.8 days after the day when they developed symptoms.

That’s why Swedish health officials are worried that the number of patients in intensive care will keep rising, following an uptick in new Covid-19 cases in recent weeks.

The number of people dying after testing positive for Covid-19 remains at a lower level than during the second wave, as more and more elderly people and other risk groups are getting vaccinated.

As of April 9th, 1,355,828 people – or 16.6 percent of Sweden’s adult population – had received their first dose of a vaccine against Covid-19.

A total of 857,401 people have tested positive in Sweden since the start of the pandemic, out of whom 13,621 have died, according to the Public Health Agency. During the entire pandemic, 6,213 people have received intensive care treatment for Covid-19.

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